Twoformer Bush administration officials are starting a new division of a D.C. consulting firm, which will focus on intellectual property.
Chris Israel, former U.S. coordinator for intellectual property enforcement for the Department of Commerce, and Stephen Pinkos, former deputy undersecretary of Commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the Patent and Trademark Office, will head up PCT Government Relations.
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The purpose for the new division of PCT, a consulting firm, is to serve as a liaison between the government and companies on IP issues, according to Israel.
“In the policy space, there’s a lot of issues currently on the table such as patent reform, and improving and refocusing IP enforcement work,” Israel said.
Israel said the new division will help the company, which has been around for a little over a year, to do more work on international projects and gain more clients in fields such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Ethan Horowitz, a partner at King and Spalding LLP’s intellectual property practice, said there is an increasing amount of work in the IP field for consultants and lawyers, particularly for clients in such industries as entertainment, electronics and banking.
“We used to have a manufacturing economy, but now we have an IP economy,” Horowitz said. “The laws have changed, and maybe 75 percent have changed for the good and 35 percent haven’t, so we’re going through the process of refining them.”
