Catherine Carroll, partner in the Litigation/Controversy Department, served on a debate panel at the highly renowned Intellectual Property (IP) Institute hosted by the University of Southern California Gould School of Law on March 14 in Beverly Hills. The institute brought together academics, judges, practitioners and in-house counsel for a discussion of developments and trends in IP law. This year’s panels featured several federal judges, including the Hon. Randall Rader, Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC. 

Carroll served on a debate panel entitled “The Grey Market: A Debate about Kirtsaeng and the Proper Scope of Trademark and Copyright Protection.” The panel focused on the copyright-exhaustion and first-sale defense issues that are currently pending before the US Supreme Court in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in which Carroll and firm Partners Randy Moss and Seth Waxman filed a brief on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America. Carroll contributed to a discussion on the pros and cons of grey-market importations, the benefits of market segmentation in copyright-based industries, and the broader implications the Kirtsaeng decision could have for brand protection, secondary retail markets and anti-piracy efforts.

The institute is an annual event that aims to provide a practical yet high-level academic discussion of trends and best practices in patent, copyright, trademark and related fields. This year marked the 10th annual installment of the institute. 

WilmerHale was a institute sponsor and also a co-sponsor of the networking reception that took place at the conclusion of the conference. Partners Andrew Grossman and Andrea Weiss Jeffries served on the conference planning committee.