Welcome & Session 1- Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy

Mary Beth Walker Related Seminars and Products

Attorney

United States Patent and Trademark Office

Mary Beth Walker in an attorney in the USPTO’s Register Protection Office.

Before her recent move to the Register Protection Office, Mary Beth worked as an Associate Solicitor in the USPTO’s Office of the Solicitor for nearly ten years. In that role she litigated and advised on trademark cases at all levels of federal court practice, including at the Supreme Court.

Mary Beth previously served as IP counsel to the House Judiciary Committee (on detail), and as an attorney in the Office of General Counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives. Before joining the public sector, Mary Beth worked for two law firms in DC, where her work focused on trademark and copyright matters. She began her law career as a clerk in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.   

Mary Beth is a graduate of Duke Law School and the University of Virginia. 

Tyler Ochoa Related Seminars and Products

Professor of Law

Santa Clara University School of Law

            Tyler T. Ochoa is a Professor with the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in California, where he teaches courses in copyright law, trademark law, rights of publicity, and international intellectual property.  Professor Ochoa is the author of annual updates to the treatise, The Law of Copyright (West 2024 edition); a co-author of Copyright Law (Carolina Academic Press 12th ed. forthcoming 2025), a widely-used casebook; a co-author of Understanding Intellectual Property Law (Carolina Academic Press 2020), a student hornbook; and a co-author of The Puzzling Purposes of Statutes of Limitation, 28 Pac. L.J. 453 (1997).  His article, Patent and Copyright Term Extension and the Constitu­tion: A Historical Perspective, 49 J. Copyr. Soc’y U.S.A. 19 (2001), was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ash­croft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003).  He has written numerous articles on intellectual property law and has submitted four amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Prior to joining the faculty at Santa Clara, he was a Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, California.

Orly Ravid Related Seminars and Products

Associate Dean, Biederman Entertainment, Media, and Sports Law Institute | Associate Professor of Law

Southwestern Law School

Professor Orly Ravid is formerly Senior Counsel at TUBI (a FOX Corporation subsidiary). After graduating from Southwestern's SCALE program, she was an entertainment attorney (Of Counsel) at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP (MSK) and continued running The Film Collaborative (TFC).  She returned to Southwestern in November 2018 as Director of the Biederman Entertainment and Media Law Institute and as an Associate Professor of Law.  Professor Ravid has over 20 years of experience in independent film (spanning distribution, sales/licensing, development, production, and business affairs).  

Professor Ravid advised and contributed to Sundance’s Artist Services / Transparency Project and was an Associate Programmer of documentaries at the festival. She has spoken on panels and conferences at film schools and festivals including Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, AFI, IDA, Doc NYC, UCLA, USC, IDFA, and LAFF/Film Independent. Professor Ravid previously served as an executive at Senator Entertainment, Wolfe Releasing, and Maxmedia.  She co-authored the book series Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul and contributed to How Not to Sign a Film Contract.  

At TFC, Ravid has been committed to educating creators and helping artistically and intellectually important films and series sustainably reach their respective audiences. Having focused on VOD and rights splitting for over a decade and being a regular traveler to content festivals and markets worldwide, Professor Ravid keeps up with the entertainment industry’s trends and challenges so she can best advise clients and law students alike.

Melinda Kern Related Seminars and Products

Attorney-Advisor

U.S. Copyright Office

Melinda joined the U.S. Copyright Office (“Office”) as an Attorney-Advisor in 2022, but started with the Office in 2020 as a Barbara A. Ringer Copyright Honors Fellow.  Since joining the Office, she has worked on a variety of copyright matters, such as rulemakings, litigation, administrative appeals, and several policy studies.  She received her J.D. from the George Washington University Law School and her B.A. in Government and World Affairs from the University of Tampa.

Ben Siders Related Seminars and Products

Intellectual Property Practice Group Leader

Lewis Rice LLC

Benjamin J. Siders is an intellectual property and technology licensing and compliance attorney with Lewis Rice LLC in St. Louis, MO, where is the Practice Group Leader for Intellectual Property.  He is a licensed patent prosecutor, and the chairman of the Copyright Law Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA).  As a former software engineer, Ben is "trilingual" (fluent in tech jargon, legalese, and English), and puts his software background to work representing small businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups in the software and computer technology sectors, as well as guiding larger enterprises through complex software audits.  He also enjoys niche practices in video games, board game, and music law.  Ben is a co-author of the American Bar Association's Legal Guide to Video Game Development, was published in the American Bar Association's Landslide journal on IP law regarding board games, holds a patent on a geogaming technology for creating parallel reality games, recently filed an amicus brief in Warner Chappell v. Nealy on behalf of AIPLA, and occasionally co-hosts a podcast about geek culture called A Lawyer’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Cathay Smith Related Seminars and Products

Professor of Law

Chicago Kent College of Law

Cathay Y. N. Smith joined the Chicago-Kent College of Law faculty in fall 2024 from the University of Montana Blewett School of Law. She has also taught at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, New York Law School’s London Program, and was a visiting academic and research fellow at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC) at the University of Oxford.

Smith’s research focuses on copyright law and free speech in contemporary culture and the art world. She teaches copyright law, property law, and art and cultural property law courses. 

Professor Smith currently serves as co-director of Chicago-Kent’s Intellectual Property Law Program.  Her past leadership experiences include serving as co-acting dean at Montana Law, and as the 2022 chair and 2021 chair-elect of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Intellectual Property.  

Prior to entering academia, Professor Smith was an associate in the trademark and copyright group at Katten in Chicago where she represented multinational technology, fashion, and entertainment and media corporations. She’s admitted to the Bar in Illinois, Colorado, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  

Education

M.Sc., The London School of Economics and Political Science

J.D., Loyola University Chicago School of Law

B.S., Washington and Lee University