Matthew Rappaport
Co-Founder, Managing Director
Matthew Rappaport co-founded IP Checkups® in 2004 after spending several years working with patent and text analytic software tools to develop a proprietary methodology for assessing the relationships between competitive patent portfolios. He has rapidly built IP Checkups into a pre-eminent source for quantitative and qualitative analysis and interpretation of patent portfolios.
Mr. Rappaport has provided competitive patent landscape analyses, IP portfolio strategy and development services, custom patent searching and analysis and created customized patent databases for large corporate clients, a variety of mid-sized biotech, pharma, medical device and cleantech companies, start-ups, venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds. Through its patent-centric approach to competitive technology markets, IP Checkups enhances companies’ understanding of the intellectual assets that underlie key products and R&D initiatives.
Matthew leads interdepartmental workshops that help companies improve IP strategies and identify white space and design around opportunities to help companies generate superior returns on investment in a variety of fields.
Mr. Rappaport has been a speaker at several conferences dealing with patent analytics, patent strategy, and the importance of patents to investors. He is a member of the IAM 250, Intellectual Asset Magazine’s list of the world’s leading IP strategists. He also serves as Virtual Professional-in-Residence at the University of Hawaii, Shidler College of Business.
Irving S. Rappaport, Esq.
Patent Attorney/Inventor/Entrepreneur
Co-Founder IP Checkups
Irving Rappaport has been a licensed patent attorney for over 35 years. He has served as the head of IP departments in all of his positions and consistently allied himself with emerging technology companies. This is evidenced by his career which began at Raytheon in the late 1960′s. From there, Irving led Medtronic’s Intellectual Property program in the early 1970′s and went on to head Data General’s IP department in the late 70′s. He was then recruited by Bally-Midway to chase Pac-Man clones during the first video game revolution and was eventually brought to Silicon Valley as Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property and Licensing at Apple Computer, where he built Apple’s IP department from 1984-90. Irving also spent time consulting for Intel and was VP and Associate General Counsel for IP and Licensing at National Semiconductor in the early 1990′s.
With a talent for spotting up and coming trends, Irving identified the need to create tools for evaluating and manipulating patents that would keep the field of patent analysis current with the high tech explosion. Thus in 1992, Irving co-founded SmartPatents, Inc., a start up focused on converting paper patents into an electronic format. This enabled people to begin to develop tools aimed at assessing and manipulating patents in ways never before possible. In 1996 SmartPatents began developing a powerful software platform used for evaluating and assessing entire patent portfolios in their competitive landscapes. In 1998 SmartPatents changed its name to Aurigin Systems, Inc. At the time of its sale in 2002 the company had over 100 Fortune 1000 companies as customers. Irving is a co-inventor on 16 U.S. patents that underlie the Aureka® software, which is considered the pre-eminent platform in its class.
Mark Garner
Director of Operations
Mark Garner manages IP Checkups’ technology infrastructure of tools and databases containing millions of patents and publications. He developed the underlying functionality and architechture of the PatentCAM software tool as well as for the CleanTech PatentEdge database. Mark’s deep understanding of patent information along with his mastery of Java, Perl and other tools enable him to enhance the quality and comprehensiveness of IP Checkups’ technology solutions related to text analytics, patent alerts, and managing IP portfolios. Mark has also overseen projects related to voice recognition, audio technologies and software systems integration.
Prior to joining IP Checkups in 2006, Mark spent five years as a professional audio and recording engineer for headlining acts and major outdoor festivals throughout the country. He earned a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. Kathryn Paisner, PhD
Director of Research, Analytics & Business Development
Kathryn Paisner joined IP Checkups in 2011 to co-manage the development, marketing and sales of the CleanTech PatentEdge solution. She also contributes her scientific expertise to IP Checkups’ boutique patent analytic and research services team, helping companies align their IP strategies with their business objectives.
Kathryn earned her PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oregon, in the lab of Professor Kenneth M. Doxsee. While at Oregon from 2007-2011, Kathryn developed a patentable class of compounds (currently at the Innovation Disclosure stage), conducted the first experimental study of Resonance-Assisted Hydrogen Bonding–a process integral to enzyme activity and the development of biomimetic and medicinal technologies–and created a reliable solid-state thiourea synthon for use in crystal engineering. She also served as a project assistant at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education, where she worked with educators in Oregon and Mexico to develop a bilingual, web-based environmental science curriculum for middle school students in both countries.
A fashion designer whose clothing was exhibited at local shows in Eugene, Oregon, Kathryn also has worked with her electronic musician husband, Russ, in concert production. Kathryn earned her BA with College Honors at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she majored in U.S. History and minored in Chemistry. Her senior thesis, More Appropriately Titled: Unsentimental Education, provided a socio-political interpretation of Gustave Flaubert’s literary achievements, in the context of mid-19th century France.
Lily Li, J.D.
Director of Marketing & Business Development
Lily Li joined IP Checkups in 2011 to co-manage the development, marketing and sales of the CleanTech PatentEdge solution. She also contributes her business and legal expertise to IP Checkups’ boutique patent analytic and research services team, helping companies align their IP strategies with their business objectives.
Lily earned her J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 2011, where she was chair of the Asian Law Students Association and lead editor for the Duke Journal for International and Comparative Law. During the 2010-2011 academic year, Lily was a visiting student at Stanford Law School. While at Stanford, Lily helped organize the seventh semi-annual Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference at PG&E headquarters and wrote the business plan for a “green” food truck for a competitive entrepreneurship course at Stanford Business School.
In the summer of 2010, Lily was a summer litigation fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., where she drafted memos concerning the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed greenhouse gas regulations, offshore drilling practices, and international CDM carbon crediting programs.
Lily earned her BA in political economy, magna cum laude, from Williams College. Her junior year, she went abroad to Rabat, Morocco to study Moroccan economic development and intensive Arabic. In her spare time, Lily is the assistant editor to Stanford Law School’s China Guiding Cases Project, an initiative to foster cross-cultural understanding and the development of the rule of law in China. Lily is an avid long-distance runner (slow but steady), a lover of organic food, and a fan of all things related to Haruki Murakami.
Sam J. Gillette, Ph.D.
Patent Analyst
Sam Gillette joined IP Checkups in 2009. He has 12 years’ experience serving as a medicinal and synthetic chemist in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Most recently he worked as a Team Leader for Plexxikon, Inc., a biotech firm specializing in the discovery and development of small-molecule pharmaceuticals through a novel scaffold-based platform. He was responsible for leading a project in the discovery of two series of potent and selective phosphodiesterase inhibitors for use in inflammatory disease. He also directed the chemistry efforts on projects for aspartyl protease inhibitors for cardiovascular disease and worked on several kinase inhibitor projects.
Prior to this, Sam worked with Covalent Partners, a nanotechnology firm developing novel medical devices. He also worked at Allergan where he assisted with the discovery and development of small-molecule modulators of nuclear hormone receptors for treatment of hyperproliferative diseases; and he worked at the University of California San Diego Department of Medicine lab where he collaborated with a team focused on discovering novel therapeutics for oncology.
Sam is a co-author on more than 10 peer-reviewed journal articles, inventor or co-inventor on more than 20 US and international patents, and has served as a speaker and discussion leader at research conferences. He also enjoys teaching chemistry courses for the University of California, Berkeley Extension and Bay Area Community Colleges.
Sam holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, a M.S. in Chemistry form the University of California, San Diego, and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.
