Prior to 2001, Dean Whealan was a staff attorney for the U.S. International Trade Commission, where he litigated several investigations involving intellectual property matters. He has clerked at both the appellate and trial court levels, serving as law clerk to Judge Randall R. Rader, J.D. ‘78, of the Federal Circuit, and Judge James T. Turner of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Dean Whealan has engaged in private practice at Fish & Neave in New York and worked as a design engineer for General Electric. For the past 10 years, he has taught as an adjunct professor of law at The Franklin Pierce Law Center and also has taught courses at George Mason University School of Law and Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Ms. Mann has also served as Administrator for the Office of Legislative and International Affairs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and as Attorney-Advisor in the same office.  While at the USPTO, she led and participated in numerous multilateral and bilateral intellectual property negotiations and also served as an advisor to the Secretary of Commerce on legislative and policy initiatives affecting the trade aspects of, and the protection of, intellectual property rights. Ms. Mann has focused on legislative and copyright matters as an associate of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, has lobbied for an industry trade association, and has worked as a congressional aide on Capitol Hill.

Ms. Mann holds a law degree from the Washington College of Law, American University, and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.

Now serving as House Majority Leader, Congressman Hoyer is charged with managing the House Floor as well as scheduling legislation to be considered on the floor. He also plays a key role in helping House Democrats determine their legislative agenda and political strategy, and building support for the party’s positions and delivering the Democratic message both in Washington and nationally. Prior to being elected Majority Leader, Congressman Hoyer served two terms as the Democratic Whip.

Congressman Hoyer’s service as Majority Leader makes him the highest-ranking member of Congress from Maryland in history. Now serving his 14th term in Congress, he also became the longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland in history on June 4, 2007.

Congressman Hoyer is recognized by members on both sides of the aisle as an effective leader and committed consensus builder who knows how to get things done. He is widely regarded as a champion for federal employees and is a well known leader on education issues. As the former Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, he also is a respected voice on human and civil rights. He is perhaps best known for serving as the lead House sponsor of historic federal election reform (the “Help America Vote Act”) and for guiding the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to passage.

Public service has always been at the center of Steny Hoyer’s professional life. He won a seat in the Maryland Senate at the age of 27, and just a few years later, at the age of 35, was elected President of the Senate, the youngest ever in state history.

Yeston has authored the December Songs (a song-cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall), and is, in addition, a symphonic composer, with his cello concerto premiered by Yo Yo Ma, and his American Cantata commissioned by the Kennedy Center and premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin at the Lincoln Memorial. He holds BA and MA degrees from Yale and England’s Cambridge University, and was for 10 years Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Yale.

Ms. Sandros joined the Copyright Office in 1995 and has worked extensively on registration issues and with the statutory licensing provisions in the copyright law, addressing current legal issues both in a regulatory and an adjudicative context. She played a key role in the Office’s determination that ringtones are within the scope of the statutory license for the making and distribution of phonorecords and its determination that broadcasters are subject to a digital performance right when streaming music over the Internet. In addition, she has been involved in the legislative process and has worked closely with congressional staff on a wide range of issues, including music licensing, design protection, the public performance of sound recordings, and revisions to the statutory damages provision.

Ms. Sandros is a graduate of the George Mason School of Law and a member of the Virginia State Bar.  She received a bachelor of arts from the University of Chicago.

Dean Lawrence began his legal career in 1980 as clerk to Judge Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Later, he was named an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, where he became chief of the office’s civil rights unit. In 1988, he joined the faculty of Boston University School of Law where he taught courses on civil procedure, criminal law, civil rights enforcement, and civil rights crimes.

He also served as the school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1996 to 1999. In 1996 he received Boston University’s Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, the university’s highest teaching honor. Dean Lawrence has been a senior visiting research fellow with the University College London Faculty of Law and has studied bias crimes law in the United Kingdom through a Ford Foundation grant. He has lectured nationally and internationally about bias crime law and testified before Congress in support of federal hate crimes legislation on several occasions – most recently in 2007 – and concerning Justice Department misconduct in Boston.

In 2004, he was a member of the American delegation to the meeting of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe on Enactment and Enforcement of Legislation to Combat Hate-Motivated Crimes. From 2003 to 2006, he served as chair of the National Legal Affairs Committee of the Anti-Defamation League. Dean Lawrence also has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the New York Choral Society.

Conlon is responsible for managing BMI’s digital interests in the U.S. and around the world. Under his direction, BMI’s New Media group has created agreements for a wide variety of leading digital media properties including Yahoo, MSN, AOL, MP3.com, Napster, Rhapsody and others. In addition, the team has negotiated royalty agreements with leading mobile entertainment providers ranging from carriers to aggregators for mobile TV, ringbacks and other entertainment and information services delivered to cell phones. Conlon’s team also created the first music industry online licensing utility, the Digital Licensing Center, offering totally electronic click-through copyright licensing agreements.

Conlon holds a Masters Degree in Communications Management from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California and B.A. in English from Boston College.

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The CIEC is a relatively new addition to the legacy of GW Law’s intellectual property program.  GW Law has been a leader in intellectual property law education for more than a hundred years.  When the Law School established a Master’s of Patent Law program in 1895, its alumni had already written the patents for Bell’s telephone, Mergenthaler’s linotype machine, and Eastman’s roll film camera, among hundreds of other inventions, and dozens more alumni had worked in the Patent Office. We developed a first-rate patent law program and then bolstered it with our strengths in copyright, trademark, communications, computer and Internet regulation, electronic commerce, international law, and genetics and medicine.

For more information: www.law.gwu.edu

Bio:

Dean Frederick Lawrence

The Creative & Innovative Economy Center (CIEC) at the George Washington University Law School believes creativity and innovation are critical tools in fighting the war on poverty, eradicating disease, and improving the quality of life through cultural expression, the creative arts and innovative technology.  The CIEC conducts research and organizes educational programs that demonstrate how these powerful catalysts – creativity and innovation – drive global economic development.

A sampling of our current research and educational programs include:

• Hosting educational roundtable discussions for technology entrepreneurs, policymakers, venture capitalists, and public researchers in Brazil, India, Thailand and Jordan;
• Educating policy makers, industry practitioners, and the general public about how creativity and innovation can be used as a tool for economic development at events in Geneva, the United Nations in New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles;
• Conducting research on film and television creativity in Egypt and India;
• Conducting research on AIDS treatment innovation in Burkina Faso and Uganda.

For more information: www.law.gwu.edu/ciec

Bio:

Michael P. Ryan

BMI is a performing right organization: It collects license fees on behalf of its songwriters, composers and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.

As a performing right organization, BMI issues licenses to various users of music, including television and radio stations and networks; new media, including the Internet and mobile technologies such as ringtones and ringbacks; satellite audio services like XM and Sirius; nightclubs, discos, hotels, bars, restaurants and other venues; digital jukeboxes; and live concerts. It then tracks public performances of its members’ music, and collects and distributes licensing revenues for those performances as royalties to the more than 375,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers it represents, as well as the thousands of creators from around the world who have chosen BMI for representation in the U.S.

BMI currently represents some more than 6.5 million compositions — a number that is constantly growing. As a result, BMI has, over the years, sought out and implemented a number of technological innovations in its continuing effort to gather the most accurate information available about where, when and how its members’ compositions are used as well as ensuring that payment to those whose works have been performed is made in as precise and timely a manner as possible.

For more information: bmi.com

Bios:

Del Bryant
Richard Conlon

Ms. Peters received her undergraduate degree from Rhode Island College and her law degree, with honors, from The George Washington University Law Center. She is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia. Ms. Peters is an active member of The Copyright Society of the U.S.A. She is also a member of the Intellectual Property Section of the American Bar Association, the District of Columbia Bar Association, including the Computer Law Section, the DC Computer Law Forum, and the Computer Law Association, where she is a member of the board of directors. She has served as a lecturer in the Communications Law Institute of The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law and as adjunct professor of copyright law at The University of Miami School of Law and at the Georgetown University Law Center. Ms. Peters served as a consultant on copyright law to the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1989-1990. A frequent speaker on copyright issues, Ms. Peters is the author of The General Guide to the Copyright Act of 1976.

When he applied his hit-making savvy to his publishing venture, Morgan Music Group, Inc., the results were staggering: Songs published by Morgan include The Dance, by Garth Brooks; Here I Am, by Patty Loveless; Fallin Out of Love, by Reba McEntire and the crossover smash I Swear, recorded by both country star John Michael Montgomery and pop quartet All-4-One. With more than 50 BMI Pop and Country Awards to his name, Morgan is a four-time BMI Country and two-time BMI Pop Songwriter of the Year. The Nashville Songwriters Association International honored Morgan with the coveted Songwriter of the Year title in 1981 and 1982, and their sister organization, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, welcomed him in 2004.

Ms. Sohn is a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center, and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. She served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Ms. Sohn to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. In May 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave her its Internet “Pioneer” Award.

Ms. Sohn currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters’ Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition and the Center for Public Integrity’s “Well Connected” Telecommunications Project. She holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

A North Carolina native, Representative Coble is a veteran attorney and effective ally for copyright owners of all disciplines. He is a strong proponent of copyright law reform and enforcement, believing all copyright users should adhere to equal guidelines and standards under the law. Representative Coble sponsored H.R. 4279, the “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007,” which, among other initiatives, creates a new office to oversee Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement.

In addition to his role as a member of the House’s Committee on the Judiciary, Representative Coble is also the Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, which exercises jurisdiction over matters of copyright, patent and trademark law, information technology, the administration of U.S. Courts, Federal Rules of Evidence, Civil and Appellate Procedure, judicial ethics, other appropriate matters as referred to by the Chairman and any relevant oversight. The subcommittee regularly schedules hearings to explore and discuss contemporary issues confronting copyright owners, believing that intellectual copyright protection ranks among the key issues that will determine America’s competitiveness in the 21st century.

Bryant, who was immersed in the creative process as the son of legendary songwriters and publishers Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, joined BMI in Nashville in 1972 and served there in both the Writer/Publisher and Performing Rights departments.

Bryant has played the leading role in re-engineering and modernizing BMI’s royalty distribution system as part of a writer acquisition initiative that attracted many of the best new writers across key genres of music, resulting in substantial increases in market share. Under his direction, BMI’s Film & Television department in Los Angeles was revitalized, and he redefined, reorganized and expanded BMI’s London outpost to be a major office representing the company for all of Europe. Bryant directed the establishment of a Latin music division, a first among American performing right organizations, and led the company’s effort in establishing an Urban music division,

He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame; has served as a member of the Board of the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International (NSAI); and is an active member of the Recording Academy, the Country Music Association, the Gospel Music Association, and the Television Academy, among others.