Renee C. Quinn

IPWatchdog’s Second Annual Meeting, IPWatchdog LIVE 2022 is less than two months away. Originally planned to start on March 16, 2020, we had to cancel our inaugural annual meeting when the pandemic shut the world down. We had no choice but to postpone the event on three separate occasions, but we were finally able to hold our first annual meeting, IPWatchdog LIVE 2021, on September 12-14, 2021. For the second year in a row, IPWatchdog LIVE 2022 will be held at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson hotel in Dallas, TX.

In early November, the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) School of Law held its 65th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference. The program consisted of five plenary sessions and ten breakout sessions featuring candid discussions and networking sessions with judges, senior government officials, and leaders of supranational IP offices, multinational corporations, law firms, academia, and nonprofit organizations. IPWatchdog’s Founder and CEO, Gene Quinn, moderated the second plenary session, “Global Patent Issues.” The program kicked off with a featured panel consisting of Andrei Iancu, Partner at Irell & Manella, Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, and Former Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; the Honorable Paul R. Michel (ret.), former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; and Brad Watts, Minority Chief Counsel for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Professor Daryl Lim, Director of UIC’s Center for Intellectual Property, Information and Privacy Law, moderated the discussion.

In November, the UIC John Marshall Law School held their 64th Annual Intellectual Property Conference.  The program consisted of five plenary sessions and nine breakout sessions featuring candid discussions and networking sessions with judges, senior government officials, and leaders of supranational IP offices, multinational corporations, law firms, academia, and nonprofit organizations. This article features a group of speakers and attendees as they share what they felt was a key message they took from the conference this year. 

Due to the continuing COVID-19 outbreak in Texas, we will unfortunately not be able to host a live CON2020 program in September as previously planned. Over the past several weeks, we have been working with sponsors and registrants to make arrangements. We greatly appreciate the support we’ve received. Thank you. Instead, we are pleased to announce that we will bring CON2020 to you VIRTUALLY and for FREE starting September 1, 2020.

IPWatchdog is pleased to announce the launch of our weekly comic series, brought to you by Wei & Sleman founding partner, Peter Sleman. Peter’s Comic Strip, appropriately named “Informal Drawings”, is a weekly comic strip devoted to patent attorneys, examiners, and inventors.

It is with tremendous sadness that I write today to say that Q. Todd Dickinson passed away on Sunday, May 3, 2020. As I choke back tears, staring at my computer screen, I find myself at a loss for words to describe someone who has been a friend for so many years, both to Renée and I personally and to IPWatchdog. I mourn not only a great man who, through his many accomplishments, did much domestically and internationally within the intellectual property world, but I also mourn one of my best, truest friends.

We have great news to share with all of our IPWatchdog CON2020 Speakers, Sponsors, Exhibitors and registrants. We have finally worked out an amicable resolution with the hotel. Although we will still hold a Virtual Program of some sort on Monday, March 16, IPWatchdog CON2020 is no longer canceled. We have rescheduled for Sunday, September 13 through Tuesday, September 15, to be held at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson. The program will be nearly identical to the live program we had scheduled for next week. More details to follow. 

As a branding and marketing professional, I really enjoy seeing how advertising has evolved over the years. Gone are the days of boring, ho-hum advertising campaigns. With modern technology such as DVRs, consumers no longer have to sit through commercials, if they don’t want to. Through the widespread reach of the Internet and social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, not to mention the ever popular, highly anticipated and super expensive Super Bowl commercials, advertising campaigns have had to become more creative and fun to catch the attention of their target consumers. Now more than ever, I find that, not only are people not fast forwarding through commercials, but they are looking forward to when their favorites air, so they can share them with others. At least that’s how it is in the Quinn household! Quite some time ago, I wrote about The Most Notable, and Sometimes Creepy, Restaurant Mascots, Characters, and Personalities. So, this time I thought I’d focus on a different type of Brand Mascot, aka real people, and highlight the top five advertising personalities within the insurance service industry. Not only are these brand personalities played by real people, but they have story lines that are so funny and memorable that you often hear people talking about them with their friends. Again, I know we do in my family. So, without further ado, here are my choices for some of the most creative, memorable and often downright comedic insurance company brand personalities, both old and new.