SILICON VALLEY INNOVATION

Moderated a stellar panel consisting of:

Mark Jen, CTO & Co-Founder, Common Networks

Bill Loesch, Member, Band of Angels

Steve Millard, Co-Founder of four companies taken public

Ms. Manthi Nguyen, Member, Sand Hill Angels

Randy Williams, Founder and CEO, Keiretsu Forum

Moder...

“Software patents are still in the basement only because of the fear of invalidity,” Mark Holmes, chief executive of Silicon Valley-based patent brokerage firm PatentBridge, said.

However, application software patents related to cybersecurity, the internet of things and...

Heard Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak on the challenges of living a life separate from the one dictated to her as a young woman. She is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, author, and former Dutch politician. In 2003, she was elected a member of the Dutch House of Representat...

The Hon. Luman Faily, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S., spoke at a lunch about the challenges Iraq faces in uniting its disparate tribal communities. Thousands of years of tradition, conflict and shifting alliances make for a very different country than the history that cr...

Heard last night at the Band of Angels dinner about a startup that can detect and identify sounds. Similar to GE’s technology that detects and alerts police to gunshots this technology can detect truck, automobile and other sounds. Interesting way to surveil a secured...

Recently heard Malcolm “MK” Palmore, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Cyber Branch of the San Francisco Division speak on the various cyber threats facing the US and how the FBI is identifying, investigating and helping defend against them. Interesting how the federa...

Spoke on a technology licensing panel with Meredith McKenzie, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Juniper Networks.  Always fun to hear the large enterprise side of licensing when I spend so much time on the startup side.  The jousting which inevitably occurs...

Moderated two panels at the Annual Meeting of the Silicon Valley Chapter of LES (Licensing Executives Society).

The first was with Sarah Guichard, Vice President, Acquisitions at RPX and Murray Vince, Senior Director, Strategic Business Development at Intellectual Ventu...

Was quoted today in a Reuters article written by Andrew Longstreth entitled “Ruling on licensing agreements may be bad news for cloud start-ups.”

“The ruling did not surprise many legal experts, who are familiar with the advantages enjoyed by the patent holders in dispu...

Attended a thought-provoking evening at NetApp with my friend and fellow Band of Angels member Dr. Jacques F. Vallée sponsored by ACG (Association for Corporate Growth) Silicon Valley.  Jacques is also a venture capitalist, computer scientist, author, former astronomer...