While China has been caught in a trade war with the United States involving intellectual property (IP) and technology transfer, India has been making dramatic improvements to its IP environment. What opportunities and lessons do the two countries offer each other and the United States in high tech, biotech, intellectual property and other areas? Asia Society Northern California, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and the Institute for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley present an evening discussion with Kirti Gupta, Vice President of Qualcomm; Dr. Amit Kapoor, Honorary Chairman of the Institute for Competitiveness and President of the India Council on Competitiveness and author of "The Age of Awakening: The Story of the Indian Economy Since Independence" (2019); Hemal Shah, Director for India at the U.S. Chamber of Commerces Global Innovation Policy Center; and Mark Cohen, who is a Director at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Asian IP Project.
Program Schedule:
5:30-6:00pm: Registration Registration Required.
6:00-7:30pm: Public program/discussion
7:30-8:00pm: Public reception
Location:
Bechtel Conference Center
500 Washington Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
Speaker Bios:
Amit Kapoor, PhD, is Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness, India; President of India Council on Competitiveness and Editor-in-Chief of Thinkers. He is as well the chair for the Social Progress Imperative & Shared Value Initiative in India and sits on the board of Competitiveness initiatives in Mexico, Netherlands, Italy & France and University of Vermonts SEMBA Advisory Board. In addition to being advisor to Thinkers50 and participant with the Global Solutions Network, he is an affiliate faculty for the Microeconomics of Competitiveness & Value Based Health Care Delivery courses of Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School and an instructor with Harvard Business Publishing in the area of Strategy, Competitiveness and Business Models. He has been inducted into the Competitiveness Hall of Fame which is administered by Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School in addition to being the recipient of the Ruth Greene Memorial Award winner for writing the best case of the year, by North American Case Research Association (NACRA).
Hemal Shah serves as director of India and emerging markets at the U.S. Chamber of Commerces Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC). She leads GIPCs advocacy efforts in India, Brazil, South Africa, and Russia. Previously, she led the U.S.-India Business Councils advocacy efforts in trade facilitation, infrastructure and smart cities policies. She also led the Councils private sector efforts on the U.S.-India-Japan trilateral and explored synergies for similar partnerships with Israel and Taiwan. Shah is currently a co-chair for intellectual property at Women In International Trade (WIIT), a non-profit, non-partisan professional organization in Washington, D.C. She holds an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics & Political Science and a BA in Business Management from the University of Nottingham.
Mark Cohen is a Senior Fellow and a Director of the BCLT Asia IP Project. With over 30 years experience as a law firm attorney, in-house counsel, government official, and law professor, Cohen was previously Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Commerce/Director of the USPTO. He is widely recognized as the leading expert in the U.S. on intellectual property law in China. He is a founding member and organizer of the US-China IP Dialogue and the US-India IP Dialogue, both hosted by the Chamber of Commerce. Cohen was also the first USPTO official posted to a US Embassy, in Beijing, China (2004-2008). Among his many honors, this past December the White House awarded Mr. Cohen with the nations highest honor for a civil servant, for his dedication to promoting protection of IP in China and globally. He hosts the popular blog www.chinaipr.com, serves as an advisor to the IP database iphouse.cn, and has published numerous books and articles on Chinas IP system and international trade.
Kirti Gupta (Ph.D) is Vice President, Technology & Economic Strategy at Qualcomm Inc., where she serves as the lead in-house economist, specializing on Technology, Intellectual Property (IP) and Competition policy and strategy. She is responsible for managing the substantive direction of the various global policy initiatives and driving and conducts original research on issues related to Technology, IP, and Competition policy. Kirti has also been responsible for developing economic models for determining Qualcomms optimal IP strategy for filing and maintenance of its patent portfolio world-wide. Prior to her role as an economist, Kirti spent over a decade as a wireless systems engineering expert, working on research and development of third and fourth generation (3G and 4G) wireless cellular systems and has represented Qualcomm in various global technology standards bodies. She is a co‐inventor of thirty-five patents in the field of wireless communications. Dr. Gupta holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.
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