Fish & Richardson's John B. Pegram Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from New York IPLA

Fish & Richardson of counsel John B. Pegram received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Intellectual Property Law Association (NYIPLA) at the organization's annual meeting on May 14, 2019. Pegram is the first practicing attorney to receive this award.

Pegram has held numerous leadership roles with NYIPLA, including serving as president, secretary, and on the board of directors. He is currently a NYIPLA delegate to the U.S. Bar-Japanese Patent Office Liaison Council. Pegram was also on the board of directors of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) and served for 15 years as an AIPLA delegate to the U.S. Bar-European Patent Office Liaison Council, which he chaired for two years. He is currently active in AIPLA's Europe and Japan committees, IPO's Europe Committee, and serves as the U.S. member of the AIPLA Committee on the proposed European Unified Patent Court. In 2011, he received the President's Outstanding Service Award from AIPLA.

Pegram co-founded Fish's New York office in 1995, where he has represented clients in a wide variety of patent, trademark, copyright, and antitrust matters with a focus in the life sciences field. Throughout his career, Pegram has worked to achieve harmonization in international patent and trademark law, meeting regularly with officials of the European and Japanese Patent Offices and IP courts. As a member of Fish's Europe and Japan teams, he has helped U.S. clients with IP issues in those jurisdictions, and represented foreign clients in U.S. IP matters. Pegram has also litigated many cases in state and federal courts, and before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.

Pegram is a leading expert on patent reform and the EU Unitary Patent & Unified Patent Court. He served as a staff member and then editor-in-chief of The Trademark Reporter, where he worked with members of the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board to establish the basis for the Board's Manual of Procedure. After the Copyright Law was rewritten in 1976, he advised the president of the Special Libraries Association and clients regarding compliance with the copying and fair use provisions.

Pegram was also active for many years in the ABA Antitrust Law and IP Law Sections as a member and chair of several committees, and a division chair in the IP Law Section. He received his B.A. in physics from Columbia University and his law degree from New York University School of Law.