On Friday, August 25, 2017, the Trump Administration announced several nominations, one of which was the nomination of Andrei Iancu to be the next Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Andrei Iancu will come to the agency after most recently serving as the managing partner of Irell & Manella LLP, practicing full time with the firm’s litigation and intellectual property practice groups. According to his firm profile, Iancu’s practice with the firm focused on intellectual property litigation, but has involved himself with all aspects of intellectual property practice, including patent and trademark prosecution, due diligence and licensing. He has represented clients in technological fields including genetic testing, the Internet, medical devices, therapeutics, telephony, TV broadcasting, video game systems and computer peripherals. In addition to his legal practice, Iancu co-teaches an advanced patent class at UCLA School of Law, where he serves as an adjunct professor.
Iancu has received recognition for his legal work since 2007 when Chambers USA first named him as a leading individual in the area of intellectual property and patent law; his bio states he has received that distinction every year since. Since 2011, Iancu has been listed by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) as among California’s top patent litigators in its annual IAM Patent 1000 report. Similar distinctions have been proffered since at least 2010 by the Los Angeles-San Francisco Daily Journal, Managing Intellectual Property and The Best Lawyers in America. In 2016, Iancu was named Lawyer of the Year for firms with 75 to 125 attorneys by the Los Angeles Business Journal. This year, he was recognized as one of BTI’s Client Service All-Stars for exemplary client service by corporate counsel at large organizations.
Iancu will also bring the perspective of a former engineer to the USPTO, having worked with Hughes Aircraft Company prior to joining law school. During his time with that company, Iancu received several awards, including the Malcolm R. Currie Innovation Award. Iancu earned his bachelor’s degree in 1989 in aerospace engineering from UCLA. He received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 1990 and graduated from the UCLA School of Law with his J.D. in 1996. While at UCLA School of Law, Iancu was a member of the Order of the Coif and received the Melville B. Nimmer Copyright Award.
PRIAevents shows a great importance to debates regarding intellectual property, patents and trademarks, organizing each year the caravan of PRIA IT&C and Intellectual Property events in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Iași, being the biggest innovation, digital and IT&C protection events in these regions, becoming the ideal framework to share the latest trends in the field and to discuss the most exciting topics for IT&C topics, intellectual property, patents and trademarks.
The series of PRIA IT&C and Intellectual Property events focuses on topics such as intellectual property protection, cloud computing, copyright, patents and inventions, trademark registrations and design. In Romania, entrepreneurship in the IT&C industry occupies an extremely important place.
