Bruce Lehman

Bruce Lehman

Former commissioner of the USPTO and chair of the International Intellectual Property Institute

IP Hall of Fame inductee in 2006

The longest-sitting and first activist commissioner of the US Patent and Trademark Office, Lehman was an architect of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and helped to negotiate the TRIPS agreement. He met monthly at the White House with President Clinton and his technology advisers, and won an award from Vice President Gore for streamlining USPTO operations. He founded the International Intellectual Property Institute in 1999, a think-tank and development organisation that has helped nations to understand, develop and harmonise their patent laws and facilitate commerce. The National Law Journal named him lawyer of the year in 1994, and in 1997 public-policy magazine National Journal named him as one of the 100 most influential people in Washington.