Technological Innovation Panel

Panel: RFID: Technological Innovation and Legal Responses

Friday, April 22, 2005, at 11:00 AM Vorenberg Classroom at Langdell Hall, Harvard Law School

Moderator

Russell Fox is a member of Mintz, Levin's Washington office, practicing in the Communications Section. With over 20 years in the wireless telecommunications industry, Fox is among the most experienced wireless communications attorneys in the country. He has spoken often at IWCE and other industry conferences. Prior to joining Mintz Levin, Fox was a partner, and head of the telecommunications department, in the Washington office of a major Chicago-based law firm where he represented users and providers of telecommunications services and equipment. Previous to that, he held the title of Executive Director and President at the American SMR Network Association, Inc., where he established offices of a national trade association representing a segment of the wireless telecommunications industry. Fox has extensive experience evaluating wireless telecommunications opportunities, structuring transactions involving the purchase, financing or sale of wireless telecommunications systems, handling regulatory and legislative matters before Federal and State authorities, and dealing with licensing matters before the Federal Communications Commission. Fox has assisted clients that have successfully participated in spectrum auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission and has secured regulatory approvals necessary for clients to offer new telecommunications services and products. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Fox was awarded his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Rochester (1978), and earned his J.D. from Duke University School of Law (1981). He is a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association and the Radio Club of America.

Panelists

Katherine Albrecht is the director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), an organization she founded in 1999 to advocate free-market, consumer-based solutions to the problem of retail privacy invasion. Since 2002, Ms. Albrecht has spearheaded efforts to alert the public to the privacy and civil liberties implications of RFID. She has testified before state legislatures, the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, and the Federal Reserve Bank, and has given over a thousand television, radio and print interviews to news outlets all over the world. Her consumer advocacy work has been featured on CNN, NPR, the CBS Evening News, Business Week, and the London Times, to name just a few. Ms. Albrecht holds an undergraduate degree in Business Administration with a concentration in International Marketing. She received her Master's degree in Instructional Technology from Harvard University, where she is currently completing her Doctorate in Education.

Elizabeth Board is the head of the public-policy steering committee of EPCglobal, the nonprofit organization set up to commercialize Electronic Product Code technology. The committee is composed of of members from industry trade associations, consumer products companies, retailers and standards organizations. The committee's job will be to promote adoption of guiding principles for how EPC technology will be used and to educate the public and stakeholders about the technology. Board is a veteran public relations executive who spent 30 years in Washington, D.C., including four years in the Reagan White House, where she was deputy assistant to the president for media relations. She spent two years running the television office and two years working with journalists from around the country who were not part of the regular Washington press corp. Board later handled public relations for the Distilled Spirits Council of United States, the trade association of the liquor industry, and then was VP of global corporate communications at AC Nielson. She worked in corporate communications at Reader’s Digest and then returned to Washington as a consultant before being hired as the director of EPCglobal’s public-policy steering committee.

Dr. Daniel Engels, Ph.D., is the Research Director of the MIT Auto-ID Labs. Auto-ID Labs is a federation of research universities that has evolved from the Auto-ID Center, initially founded in 1999 to develop an open standard architecture for creating a seamless global network of physical objects. Funded in part by EPCglobal, government and industry, Auto-ID Labs is based at the Center's same six leading universities worldwide: MIT, University of Cambridge, University of Adelaide, Keio University, Fudan University and University of St. Gallen. Each with distinct interests and capabilities, but linked by the common vision of an "Internet of things," we continue to research and develop new technologies and applications for revolutionizing global commerce and providing previously unrealizable consumer benefits.

James Nehf is the Cleon H. Foust Fellow and
Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis.
He has been a visiting professor at the University of Georgia School of
Law for the past two years. He earned his B.A. at Knox College in 1979
and his J.D. at the University of North Carolina in 1983. He graduated
first in his law school class, served as editor-in-chief of the North
Carolina Law Review, and was elected to Order of the Coif. After law
school, he served as a law clerk for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch
of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and
entered private practice with O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C.
Before joining the faculty in 1989, he was a partner in the Washington
firm of Choate, Filler, & Nehf, specializing in commercial and
consumer litigation. Professor Nehf serves as an executive board member
of the International Consumer Law Association, a society of consumer law
scholars based in Toronto. He has won numerous teaching awards and has
been a frequent speaker at law conferences, CLE seminars, and
law-related lecture series. Professor Nehf was the inaugural Director of
the law school's European Law Program and has held several university
administrative positions, including a term as interim Director of the
Indiana University Center on Southeast Asia. His publications include an
updated and revised edition of Corbin on Contracts - Impossibility, and
numerous articles on consumer law, commercial transactions and
international/comparative law subjects. He has written extensively in
information privacy law.