Agenda for Women’s IP Forum 2026

Registration & Breakfast

Welcome to the 2026 Women’s IP Forum

Renee Quinn, President of IPWatchdog, welcomes attendees to the 2026 Women’s IP Forum and opens a program designed to advance substantive discussion, professional growth, and meaningful connection across the intellectual property community. She will preview the themes that will shape the Forum and set the stage for two days of candid conversation, practical insight, and shared experience.

Renée C. Quinn

What Forty Years in Patent Law Taught Me About Career, Life, and What Matters

Drawing on nearly four decades as a patent lawyer, corporate leader, advocate, and mentor, Sherry Knowles will share the real-life experiences and lessons that shaped her career. Through personal stories, she will examine the decisions, setbacks, relationships, risks, and unexpected turns that rarely appear in a professional biography but often determine the course of a life and career.

Sherry Knowles

Networking Break

Carving Your Own Path: Navigating Career, Family, and Life in IP

Building on Sherry Knowles’ reflections from nearly forty years in patent law, this panel will broaden the conversation from one woman’s career journey to the many different paths women are carving across the IP profession today. Panelists at different stages of their careers will discuss the choices, turning points, tradeoffs, and support systems that have shaped both their professional lives and their lives beyond the workplace.

Morgan Connell

Melissa Pytel

Sydney Redden

Margaret Turchinski

Networking Break

The Biopharma Policy Crossroads: Patents, R&D and the Future of Medicine

This panel will examine the most significant legislative and regulatory developments affecting patents, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, and innovation in the United States. The discussion will consider which proposals are most likely to advance, how federal and state initiatives may intersect or conflict, and what these developments could mean for innovators, creators, companies, rights holders, and the lawyers who advise them.

Kelly Anderson

Eileen McDermott

Jamie Simpson

Jocelyn Ulrich

Lunch

The Shifting Global IP Landscape: Protection, Enforcement, and Innovation Across Borders

The global IP landscape is shifting in ways that require rights holders to think more strategically about where and how they protect, enforce, and defend intellectual property. This panel will examine the changing global enforcement environment from multiple perspectives, including patent enforcement, trademark and anti-counterfeiting strategy, customs and border measures, online marketplace enforcement, and emerging jurisdictional opportunities.

Diane Gabl Kratz

Salumeh Ramsay

Liliane Roriz

Suzanne Schultz

Networking Break

What Patents Are Really Worth: The Economics of Patent Licensing

This panel will examine how sophisticated licensors, licensees, counsel, and valuation professionals assess patent value in real-world transactions and disputes. The conversation will explore royalty structures, comparable licenses, portfolio strength, litigation and validity risk, damages principles, SEP licensing, FRAND obligations, and the practical factors that drive parties toward—or away from—a deal.

Janine Carlan

Carlyn Irwin

Ngoc Ngo, Ph.D.

Jaime Olin

Networking Break

Protecting the Pipeline: Building Life Sciences Patent Portfolios for Long-Term Value

This panel will examine how life sciences companies build layered patent protection around their most important products and pipelines. The discussion will explore claim strategy, continuation practice, global filing decisions, platform and product protection, formulations, methods of treatment, manufacturing innovations, diagnostics, and follow-on developments.

Erica Fishel, Ph.D.

Nicole Mastrangelo

Punita Shah

Runa Shah-Qaderi

Networking Break

The Global Pharma Patent Battlefield: Strategy for the Next Wave of Life Sciences Disputes

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology patent litigation is entering a new global phase. Exclusivity disputes no longer play out in a single forum or under a single legal regime, and life sciences companies must increasingly assess litigation risk across U.S. district courts, the PTAB, Hatch-Waxman and BPCIA pathways, competition and antitrust claims, regulatory exclusivity frameworks, and international enforcement venues, including the Unified…

Nancy Braman

Sherry Knowles

Annika Lückemann, Ph.D.

Salumeh Ramsay

Sarah Spires

Reception

Registration & Breakfast

Welcome Back and Day Two Preview

Renee Quinn welcomes attendees back for the second day of the 2026 Women’s IP Forum and reflects on the ideas and conversations that defined Day One. She will preview the day ahead, highlighting how the program will build on that foundation with additional perspectives on leadership, career development, legal strategy, and the evolving IP landscape.

Renée C. Quinn

Keynote: Coke Stewart

We are pleased to once again have Coke Morgan Stewart join us for a fireside chat with IPWatchdog President, Renée Quinn, and IPWatchdog Editor-in-Chief, Eileen McDermott. Coke Morgan Stewart is former Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Director of the USPTO, from January 2025 through September 2025. In September 2025, Stewart became Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a position she held through July 31, 2026.

Renée C. Quinn

Coke Morgan Stewart

Coffee Break

Inside the In-House IP Function: Pressures, Priorities, and the Problems No One Sees

In this candid, off-the-record discussion, experienced in-house IP professionals will examine the pressures that come with managing an IP function from the inside. The conversation may address competing internal demands, budget and staffing constraints, relationships with business units and outside counsel, portfolio triage, litigation exposure, executive expectations, career pressures, and the challenge of delivering practical advice when the available choices are imperfect.

Francesca Cruz

Becky Kaufman

Mary Penn

Valarie Rosen

Erin Wills

Networking Break

Translating IP for the C-Suite: Counseling Leadership on Innovation, Risk, and Enterprise Value

Building on the preceding discussion of the pressures and constraints facing the in-house IP function, this panel will explore what the C-suite and board need to hear, which metrics and narratives resonate, how to frame IP spending as an investment rather than a cost, and how to obtain support before a crisis forces the issue. Panelists will also address how effective IP leaders move beyond reporting activity to shaping decisions—connecting intellectual property strategy with innovation, market position, risk management, and long-term enterprise value.

Krista Aiello

Anna-lisa Gallo

Sheila Kadura

Ceyda Maisami

Renée C. Quinn

Lunch

The Art of Patent Litigation: Skills, Strategy, and Storytelling that Win Patent Cases

This panel will explore the craft behind effective patent litigation, including case framing, witness preparation, expert strategy, written and oral advocacy, courtroom judgment, and the strategic decisions that shape outcomes long before trial. Panelists will discuss how successful litigators simplify without oversimplifying, adapt their approach to different forums and decision-makers, and develop an authentic advocacy style that is both persuasive and strategically effective.

Sarah S. Burg

Janine Carlan

Elisabeth (Bette) Muirhead

Katie O’Sullivan

Jennifer Towle

Networking Break

How Generative AI Is Reshaping IP Risk

This panel will examine how generative AI is changing the IP risk landscape and what organizations should be doing now to respond. Panelists will discuss emerging litigation and regulatory trends, the limits of existing legal frameworks, practical approaches to AI governance and contracting, and how counsel can identify and manage risk without unnecessarily slowing innovation.

Stephanie Curcio

Kendra Ervin

Rinat Shangeeta

Marlene Valderrama

Networking Break

AI Confidential: Protecting Trade Secrets When Every Employee Has an AI Tool

This panel will examine how generative AI is changing trade secret practice, including the risks created by public AI tools, prompt retention, training rights, confidentiality terms, privilege, readily ascertainable information, and internal AI policies. The discussion will also consider when trade secrets make strategic sense, when patent protection is still necessary, and how companies can protect competitive advantage without accidentally destroying the very secrecy they are trying to preserve.

Erin Crockett

Sarah Lopano

Cynthia Mitchell

Thara Russell

Networking Break

The AI Content Wars: Copyright, Fair Use, Training Data and the Future of Human Creation

This panel will examine the fast evolving copyright and data-rights issues raised by generative AI, including fair use, training-data licenses, ownership of AI-assisted works, provenance, output risk, market harm, and the growing business importance of verified human-created content. The discussion will also explore why human creativity remains essential not only as a matter of law and policy, but as a technical and commercial input for AI systems that depend on high-quality training data.

Allison Gaul

Catherine Zaller Rowland

Eileen McDermott

Bijou Mgbojikwe

Reception

Networking Breakfast

Beyond Business Development: Cultivating Professional Opportunity Without Selling Yourself

Join Gene Quinn for a special live studio recording of IPWatchdog Unleashed with Marlene Valderrama and Fran Cruz for a candid conversation about building professional opportunity without feeling like you are selling yourself. The discussion will focus on how authentic relationships, thoughtful follow-up, disciplined curiosity, credibility, and consistent visibility can create career momentum, referrals, leadership opportunities, and long-term professional resilience.…

Francesca Cruz

Gene Quinn

Marlene Valderrama

Coffee Break

From Patent Bar to Patent Litigator: Carving a Path in IP

Join Gene Quinn for a special IPWatchdog Unleashed live conversation with Nancy Braman, Senior Associate at Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP. Nancy’s journey through intellectual property has come full circle—from taking Gene’s PLI patent bar review course before law school, to attending Franklin Pierce Law School, to spending more than three years writing and researching for IPWatchdog, and now litigating high-stakes patent and intellectual property disputes for life sciences and technology companies.

Nancy Braman

Gene Quinn

Coffee Break

IPWatchdog Unleashed Live Podcast Recording

Gene Quinn

Lunch