Join CPTCLA Today
The CPTCLA is the oldest legal association dedicated to practitioners of Intellectual Property law in North and South Carolina. CPTCLA typically hosts an annual Spring CLE seminar in North Carolina, as well as a Fall CLE seminar in South Carolina, offering approximately nine to twelve hours of CLE credit on a yearly basis. Our Fall CLE meeting will be held on September 26-27, 2025 at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort on Kiawah Island, SC. We are currently finalizing a great line-up of speakers. JOIN US
Fall CLE
CPTCLA FALL MEETING – September 26-27, 2025 - REGISTER NOW
The Association will hold its annual Fall Meeting on September 26-27, 2025, at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort on the Kiawah Island, SC. The program will begin Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM at the West Beach Conference Center. The Friday CLE program will then be followed by a cocktail reception on the West Beach Conference Center Lawn. In the event of inclement weather, the reception will be hosted in the Grand Hall inside the conference center. Breakfast will be available on Saturday morning at 8:00 AM. The Saturday CLE program will begin at 8:30 AM and conclude at 12:25 PM.
CLE SPEAKERS AND PRESENTATIONS
This year’s Fall program will include approximately 7.0 hours of CLE credit. We are excited to have the following speakers with more to come:
IP LITIGATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY
This year we are privileged to host a panel of United States Federal Court Judges from both North Carolina and South Carolina which will be moderated by a former career clerk from the Western District of North Carolina. The panel includes:
PANELISTS:
The Honorable Max O. Cogburn Jr., United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina;
The Honorable Jacquelyn Denise Austin, United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina;
Tricia W. Magee, former career clerk to the Honorable Frank D. Whitney United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina will moderate the Federal District Court Panel.
SPEAKERS:
Thomas L. Irving of the Marbury Law Group, PLLC and Paul Browning of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP will present "Patent Law: Year in Review, and What A Year It Has Been."
**additional speakers to be announced**
You may register online at www.cptcla.org/fall-register.php.
If you have any questions regarding the CPTCLA Fall Meeting, please contact John Dresch at John.Dresch@AGG.com
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
The Honorable Max O. Cogburn Jr.
Max O. Cogburn, Jr. was sworn-in as United States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina on March 14, 2011. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. During his career he has served as a United States Magistrate Judge; Assistant U.S. Attorney, serving as lead attorney in the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force and chief assistant U.S. Attorney as well as other stints in private practice where he engaged in a criminal and civil practice.
Judge Cogburn has had extensive trial experience appearing as sole or lead counsel in a large number of jury trials. He has also argued many cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
He was the Fourth Circuit Representative on the Committee on Defender Services for the Judicial Conference of the United States, 2016 to 2022.
The Honorable Jacquelyn Denise Austin
Judge Austin attended the University of South Carolina, where she graduated in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. She attended law school at the University of South Carolina School of Law and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1996. While in law school, she was a member of the John Belton O’Neal Inn of Court and the National Moot Court Team. She received the Student Compleat Lawyer Award and served as Student Notes Editor on the Environmental Law Journal.
Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Matthew J. Perry, Jr. Upon completing her clerkship, she entered private practice for fourteen years, most recently as a Partner with the law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, LLP. She spent three years of private practice drafting and prosecuting United States and European patent applications, and eleven years in commercial litigation involving matters such as patent infringement litigation, trademark and copyright litigation, and cases involving racial discrimination, the Fair Housing Act, engineering design, product liability, real estate matters, and other contract disputes.
In February 2011, she was sworn in as a United States Magistrate Judge for the District of South Carolina. As a Magistrate Judge, she handled both a criminal and civil docket for the district, as well as cases from the civil violations bureau (CVB Court) and drug court proceedings in Greenville. Her civil docket included employment disputes involving race, sex, FMLA, and disability discrimination; contract, consumer credit, product liability, patent litigation and insurance disputes; and prisoner civil rights and prison conditions litigation. Her criminal docket included the review of search warrant applications and arrest warrants for probable cause; the handling of bond hearings for those arrested by our federal agencies and/or indicted by our Grand Jury; bond violation hearings and hearings to determine whether post-incarceration defendants have violated the conditions of their supervised release; receiving guilty pleas for individuals facing misdemeanor offenses, and conducting felony guilty plea hearings, providing a recommended disposition to the District Judge. She also presided over drug court proceedings in Greenville, which are part of a districtwide, pretrial diversionary court called the BRIDGE Program.
On January 30, 2024, she was sworn in as a United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina. Her civil docket will encompass matters in Greenville, Columbia and Florence South Carolina, and her criminal docket will encompass matters in Greenville South Carolina.
Tricia W. Magee
Tricia Magee is a partner with Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP. Prior to returning to Shumaker, Tricia spent 18 years as the career law clerk to Judge Frank D. Whitney, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina. She provided sound counsel to the judge in more than 150 federal jury and bench trials and thousands of federal civil and criminal cases. Drawing on her broad range of legal knowledge and acumen, Tricia gave advice in complex business litigation matters, including: trademark, copyright, and patent disputes; employment disputes; contract disputes; class and collective actions; and criminal litigation matters involving governmental investigations. Tricia also served on the WDNC Local Rules Committee and the Local Patent Rules Committee, which helped draft the inaugural set of rules for the WDNC.
Prior to serving as Judge Whitney's law clerk, Tricia practiced civil and commercial litigation at Shumaker and gained experience in both of North Carolina's appellate courts, serving as a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Tyson on the NC Court of Appeals and an extern to then-Justice Mark Martin on the NC Supreme Court. Her experience "behind the scenes" in federal court and North Carolina's appellate courts has left her with a unique perspective into the judiciary, which is a value added to her clients.
Thomas L. Irving
Tom Irving, a Senior Partner of The Marbury Law Group, has more than 49 years of experience in intellectual property law. His U.S. pharmaceutical practice includes America Invents Act (AIA) post-grant proceedings, due diligence, counseling (particularly on strategy and tactics), patent prosecution, reissue, and reexamination. In addition to advising on procuring strong U.S. patents, Tom counsels clients on a wide range of pharmaceutical and life sciences matters, including pre-litigation, Orange Book listings of patents covering FDA-approved drugs and methods of use, infringement issues, enforceability, supplemental examination, and validity analysis. He has served as lead counsel in numerous patent interferences, reissues, reexaminations, and AIA post-grant proceedings, as well as an expert witness in patent litigation.
Tom’s current practice is heavy on due diligence analysis, particularly for innovative targets and has driven deals where the target garnered more than one billion dollars, as well as for innovative suitors, AIA post-grant proceedings, and how to evaluate and enhance the strength of U.S. patents in the pharmaceutical space to be listed in the Orange Book and strengthened to withstand PTAB post-grant challenges and district court litigation. Tom has directed the preparation of highly complex IPRs, which worked out well for the innovative pharma patent owner. Tom also focuses on 35 U.S.C. §112(f), supplemental examination, writing claims likely to be infringed, and Sanofi v. Watson-type claims, all of which he considers to be under-utilized.
Tom has been extensively involved in counseling, due diligence, prosecution and prelitigation matters involving major drugs such as Kalydeco®, Orkambi®, Aloxi®, Tecfidera®, Lorcaserin®,Pulmicort®, Respules®, Taxotere®, Eloxatin®, Lantus®, Crestor®, Targretin®, Brilinta®, Halaven®,Allegra®, Apidra®, Epiduo Gel®, Rilutek®, Ramipril®, Jakafi®, Duexis®, Viracept®, KEVEYIS®, and, prior to FDA approval, other drugs such as Rimonabant®, VX-661, and HMPL 0004®. He successfully reissued the patent for the low molecular weight heparin drug, Lovenox®, a blockbuster product.
For more than 25 years, Tom served as principal teacher of the now defunct Patent Resources Group (PRG) Chemical Patent Practice course, a comprehensive three-day course on U.S. chemical and life science patent law taught twice a year, and he coauthored the multi-volume treatise used in the course. He originated PRG’s Orange Book and Due Diligence courses, which helped prepare patent owners, through effective application drafting and prosecution, to withstand the rigors of AIA’s inter partes review (IPR) and post-grant review (PGR), as well as patent litigation. He presents analyses of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions for many state bar association groups and national trade and bar association meetings, such as Intellectual Property Owners Association, American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), North Carolina and South Carolina Bar Associations, Ohio Bar Association, Texas Bar Association, CAIL in Plano Texas, and American Bar Association. Tom has lectured at many law schools, such as Harvard, Howard, Emory, Ave Maria, the University of Utah, and BYU in the United States and also law schools in China, and at the Patent Office of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China. He has participated in well more than 150 Strafford Webinars on U.S. patent law topics, including several that dealt with 35 U.S.C. § 112(f), Sanofi v. Watson-type claims, supplemental examination, inducement to infringe, claim construction, enablement, written description, claim definiteness, REMS patents, CCPA cases, and AIA post-grant proceedings. Over his 47 years, Tom has trained literally thousands of patent professionals in the U.S. and abroad.
Tom has been recognized by Intellectual Asset Management as a global IP leader and leading patent prosecutor in the D.C. metro area, as well as nationally for post-grant procedures. The Legal 500 U.S. has recognized him for patent portfolio management and licensing, and he has been ranked as a patent “IP Star” by Managing Intellectual Property (MIP) since 2016. Tom was inducted into the LMG Life Sciences Hall of Fame and recognized as the Patent Strategy & Management Attorney of the Year for the District of Columbia. In 2022, the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) declared him a “Titan of the IP Bar” and the Bar Association of D.C. named him Patent Prosecutor of the Year. Tom is very proud that just this year, the Howard Law School gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award for IP Social Justice.
Tom is deeply committed to DEI, and particularly seeks to advance the interests of women in patent law, including minority women in patent law. That contribution was recognized by the North Carolina Bar Association in March 2023.
Paul Browning
Paul Browning, Ph.D., is a first chair litigator focusing on patent litigation and appeals, primarily in the chemical and pharmaceutical areas, including Hatch-Waxman litigation. He has tried cases before judges in various U.S. district courts and has handled arbitrations and mediations. He also advises on patent portfolio strategy with an eye toward success in litigation.
Paul’s broad litigation experience includes taking and cross-examining witnesses at trial, briefing and arguing dispositive motions, drafting appellate briefs, and arguing cases on appeal. He has also managed day-to-day litigation activities in actions involving multiple parties. In addition to his litigation practice, Paul advises clients on a variety of patent matters, including strategic development of their patent portfolios and coordination of prosecution and U.S. and foreign litigation strategy and related proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
Paul frequently lectures on various topics in chemical patent law and has been recognized as a litigation star by Benchmark Litigation. He designed laser systems and conducted spectroscopy of small molecules while earning master’s and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago.
Paul devotes a portion of his practice to pro bono matters and previously led the firm’s pro bono committee. He represents military personnel seeking enhanced compensation for injuries received while serving in the military, including injuries received in combat. He also represents veterans in cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
ACCOMMODATIONS
Please note that we have a limited number of rooms in our block, which are available on a first-come-first-served basis until August 26, 2025. Please make your reservation now to receive your choice of room at our negotiated rates. Rooms have been blocked for CPTCLA as follows (exclusive of taxes, resort fees, and gratuities):
- 1 bedroom scenic villa at $230/night;
- 2 bedroom scenic villa at $310/night; and
- 3 bedroom scenic villa at $355/night
Rooms in the block can be booked by calling Kiawah Resort at 1-800-654-2924 and requesting a room for the CPTCLA Fall Event or emailing group_reservations@kiawahresort.com. Online reservations are also available at https://kiawahresort.com/reservation-request/cptcla-fall-meeting-350/
***If you require special assistance or a handicap-accessible room during your stay, please do not hesitate to let Kiawah Island Golf Resort know prior to making your reservation.***
CANCELLATION POLICIES
CPTCLA cannot control or dictate charges incurred as a result of room cancellations that are not timely made in accordance with Kiawah Island Golf Resort’s reservation policy. Please call Kiawah Island Golf Resort directly any questions regarding room cancellations.
DIRECTIONS
Directions to Kiawah Island Golf Resort are available at https://kiawahresort.com/about-us/our-location/
When using a GPS device to locate the office for villa registrations, please enter 1 Vacation Way, Kiawah Island, SC 29455 as the street address. Upon arrival, inform the front gate attendees that you are checking in as guests of the Resort and you will be directed from there.
For more information about Kiawah Island Golf Resort, the site of the 2025 CPTCLA Fall Meeting, please visit www.kiawahresort.com.