August 28, 2012
News Digest: Franklin is plenary speaker, patent and trademark pilot launched, Honor: Ed Lazowska, financial conflict of interest regs in effect
Jerry Franklin gives plenary at Ecological Society of America meeting
Jerry Franklin, UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, gave one of the three plenary sessions at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, the world’s largest society of professional ecologists.
His keynote address, titled “Forests, fish, owls, volcanoes . . . and people: Reflections on 50 years of accumulated ecological knowledge and its application to policy,” received a standing ovation according to a Sustainability Ideas blog post where the writer said, “This was one of the most beautiful speeches I have heard in some time – mostly because Jerry shines with such a genuine passion for ‘his forests’, and a genuine humility.”
Law school begins pilot program in patent, trademark law
Starting this fall, students in the UW School of Law’s Entrepreneurial Law Clinic will get to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office through a new pilot program.
The UW is one of a dozen schools selected in July for the trademark office’s Patent Law School Certification Pilot Program, where students get experience drafting and filing patent or trademark applications for clients of the law clinic and communicating with patent examiners or trademark examining attorneys regarding those applications.
The students will be supervised by Jesse Kindra, an attorney with a patent background who is also director of intellectual property management for the UW Center for Commercialization, also called C4C. Signe Naeve, associate director of the UW Law, Technology & Arts Group, will oversee the trademark law pilot program while Jennifer Fan, director of the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, will be the liaison between that clinic and the commercialization center.
The UW Entrepreneurial Law clinic also was one of nine selected to be part of the patent office’s Patent Law School Clinic Certification.
David Kappos, undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said, “Our selection committee chose these 11 schools because of their exemplary intellectual property curricula, their effective outreach to inventor communities and their comprehensive client services.”
Ed Lazowska receives Reed College’s Vollum Award
Ed Lazowska, UW professor of computer science and engineering, accepted Reed College’s 2012 Vollum Award last week in Portland, Ore. The distinction recognizes perseverance, problem-solving and creative imagination among science and technology leaders. Lazowska gave a talk and accepted the award at Reed’s convocation ceremony. The award was founded in 1975 and is named for Howard Vollum, a Reed College graduate who co-founded Tektronix, Inc., a developer of testing and measuring equipment. Previous UW recipients include geneticist Stanley Fields, biologist Leroy Hood, mathematician Victor Klee and biochemist Edwin Krebs.
Official notice: New financial conflict of interest regulations in effect
Investigators are expected to be in full compliance as of Aug. 24 with revised financial conflict of interest regulations.
