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John J. Garland III ’85, executive vice president of ThinkFire, will deliver a lecture entitled “An Introduction to Intellectual Property and Leveraging Innovation: The Value of Intellectual Property” at noon Wednesday, March 8, in Hugel Science Center room 100.
The talk is sponsored by the student branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the William E. Simon Professorship in Political Economy. Lunch will be served at no charge.
ThinkFire is an intellectual property licensing and advisory firm that works with leading technology companies and investors worldwide. Garland, who graduated from Lafayette with a B.S. in electrical engineering, also will speak about patents with the electrical and computer engineering senior design team at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 9. In their capstone course the students are addressing the difficulty of intercommunication among first responders, as highlighted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, by building a prototype system that provides communication interoperability between voice communication technologies.
Garland is responsible for developing and implementing technology and patent licensing negotiation efforts on behalf of ThinkFire’s clients and was part of the initial management team that created ThinkFire in July 2001. He leads multidisciplinary project teams to assist and partner with clients in offensive and defensive licensing negotiations, patent divestitures and acquisitions, commercial and technical assessment of patents, and IP strategy development. He also serves as corporate account executive for strategic accounts and operates as a profit center manager.
Involved in the field of intellectual property since 1993 with AT&T and later with Lucent Technologies, Garland advanced to director of worldwide licensing for Lucent Technologies. He was responsible for leading a team of licensing professionals in the United States, France, and Japan with a focus on semiconductor, telecommunications, laser, multimedia, computing, and optical component and optical networking companies. Garland has directed and led patent and technology license agreements with leading high-tech companies in North America, Asia, and Europe. In 1996, he was awarded Lucent Technologies’ IP Division’s Business Excellence Award.
Prior to joining AT&T’s Intellectual Property Division, Garland was a marketing manager with AT&T Microelectronics with worldwide responsibilities for a portfolio of high voltage analog/digital integrated circuits (ASIC, semi-custom, and standard products). He achieved revenue growth in excess of 200 percent during 1989-93 and in 1991 was awarded the Outstanding Marketing Support Award for Europe.
Garland was both a test engineer and IC fabrication engineer for AT&T Microelectronics, participating in circuit development, yield enhancement, cost reduction, chip re-design, failure mode analysis, and improving manufacturing processes for a family of integrated circuits used in AT&T’s digital voice communication system.
Garland holds an MBA from Lehigh University and attended the Executive Development Program at the Kellogg School of Northwestern University.