Connect with Ben Hodges, Rob Teel, Kelly Mennemeier and Sean Clavere at the 2026 CenterForce IP Strategy Summit on Wednesday, May 20, in Seattle. This summit is a premier gathering for IP professionals seeking to stay at the forefront of intellectual property law and strategy.
Featured Foster Garvey sessions:
Using Your Full Arsenal: Leveraging Every IP Asset to Strengthen Competitive Position
9:00 a.m.
Ben Hodges, Foster Garvey PC
The strongest IP strategies aren’t built in silos — they’re orchestrated across every available protection. From patents and trade secrets to licensing, trademarks, and copyrights, today’s leaders are integrating their entire portfolio into a cohesive system that deters competitors and amplifies business value. This discussion unites perspectives from across industries to illustrate how a coordinated IP arsenal creates both a shield and a sword in the global innovation race.
This panel will explore:
-
- How to combine patents, trade secrets, and licensing in a unified protection strategy.
- When to patent, when to keep confidential, and how to use each choice to reinforce the other.
- Building cross-functional alignment between legal, R&D, and business units around IP strength.
- Measuring portfolio effectiveness through competitive outcomes and long-term resilience.
Hope Is Not a Strategy: Trade Secrets Litigation Preparedness in 2026
2:50 p.m.
Ben Hodges, Foster Garvey PC
Trade secrets disputes in 2026 aren’t lost because companies “don’t care”—they’re lost because the business can’t prove what was secret, who had access, what safeguards existed, and what actually happened when key people left. With employee mobility, hybrid work, vendor sprawl, and generative AI expanding exposure, trade secret protection has become a litigation-readiness discipline: identify, label, control access, train, monitor, and preserve evidence—before the incident.
This panel will discuss:
-
- How to operationalize trade secret protection with internal stakeholders
- Legal and technical controls to mitigate risk across distributed workforces
- Real-world lessons from recent trade secret litigation and investigations
- Embedding trade secret education and accountability into employee workflows
To learn more and register, visit the CenterForce website.
