Member since August 2017
MAURA K. MORAN is an attorney and owner of Cambridge Technology Law LLC, where she focuses her legal practice on Intellectual Property (IP), technology transfer, licensing, and strategic alliances. She advises R&D, sales, licensing, and marketing teams of global enterprises, small businesses, start-ups and universities. Maura has practiced law with major law firms and through her own firm. She has also served as inside counsel for ZOLL Medical Corporation, FINsix Corporation, ADE Corporation (now acquired by KLA-Tencor Corporation) and Digital Equipment Corporation (now acquired by Hewlett Packard).
Maura has been advocating on technology issues for over a decade with IEEE-USA, the US arm of the world's largest professional organization. She is a past Vice President for Government Relations, where she served on IEEE-USA's Board of Directors and provided direction and oversight of its government relations programs and policy committees, advocating to the U.S. Government on issues such as immigration, R&D, STEM education, entrepreneurship and innovation, aerospace, transportation, communication, cybersecurity, and IP. She has also served as Chair of IEEE-USA's IP Committee and IEEE's Global Public Policy Committee. Through her work with IEEE-USA, she has co-authored amicus briefs filed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and comments to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Maura is registered to practice before the USPTO. She is admitted to the bar in Massachusetts and to several federal courts. She is a graduate of the University of Dayton (B.S. Mathematics) and received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She has completed undergraduate and graduate coursework in Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University, Boston, MA, and is active in the Boston chapters of IEEE’s Women in Engineering, Robotics and Automation Society, and Computer Society.
Throughout my career, I have had the good fortune to support a wide variety of companies, from startups to multi-nationals. Each has had its own needs and strengths, and finding ways to help them achieve their objectives, using IP as a business tool, has been an adventure. IEEE-USA has been especially rewarding, because the issues I now get to address extend to cybersecurity, job creation, immigration, energy policy, and autonomous vehicles.
Advocacy has proven to be personally rewarding as well. For years, I thought that if one learned the rules of the game and played the game by those rules, sometimes you’d win, sometimes you’d lose, but your likelihood of winning would increase by knowing the rules cold and applying them in a thoughtful, strategic way. However, over time, I learned there was more to supporting my clients than responding to their requests. I also needed to look at the rules and the environment that they live with, and if they did not fit, do my best to change them until they did fit. It was then that I realized that if we do participate in the process by which the rules that govern our lives are made or changed, we have only ourselves to blame if the changes are not beneficial to us and to our endeavors. And that is where advocacy comes in.
As technologists, we can no longer afford to sit out the political process. In addressing today’s most vexing, complicated issues, our legislators need the technological context that we, as technically literate citizens can provide.
At a time when our country seems so divided along political lines, when all issues seem so split on red and blue terms, there are many issues where we can find common ground. And it behooves us to look for those kinds of issues to foster and expand our common ground.
Patent reform was one such area issue. A few years ago, as a volunteer with IEEE-USA’s Intellectual Property Committee, I was doing a day of Hill visits to ask legislators to oppose patent litigation reform as it was being proposed in two bills before Congress. These bills were especially harmful to small companies and disruptive technologies. On our visits, first, we met with staff for Sen. Durbin, one of the most progressive members of the U.S. Senate. He was already opposed to these bills, so the conversation was about how IEEE-USA could help him. His staff wanted data, which we could supply.
Then we went to Sen. Cruz’s office, who is pretty much Sen. Durbin’s political polar opposite. One of his staffers told us patent reform was not even on their radar, so why should they care? We explained the problems with this flavor of patent reform and the potential harm to small companies and disruptive technologies. The staffer thanked us, and we left the office, thinking, well, we tried.
Six months later, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to markup one of the bills. Sen Durbin spoke, saying what we expected to hear, that “[T]he PATENT Act would end up hurting honest innovators all in the name of ending the problem of patent trolls.” A little while later, it was Sen. Cruz’ turn. He said: ”I found Senator Durbin’s remarks quite powerful and persuasive. We have in our economy a particular obligation . . . to protect the little guy who is inventing the next great invention that will transform the world . . . , and I fear that if we lean too far against the small patent holder that in turn will hamper innovation in our economy.”
And that is why I do what I do.
We do not choose our careers; instead, our careers choose us. As opportunities arise in our lives, the choices we make pull us toward our life’s calling. Growing up, I could not decide whether to study science or the arts, especially English and History. Theater had some appeal, but so did making a living. Medicine was out; I had volunteered in a hospital as a teen, and, well, no thank you. My father was an engineer and very persuasive. On a day trip for a Career Options event at Purdue University, we agreed that I should study math. After all, it bridges all forms of science and engineering. Fortunately, the University of Dayton was nearby and had a terrific mathematics program. UD is known for its strong engineering school, so UD’s mathematics program was quite applied in nature, which fit me quite well.
However, after four years of college, I was missing the world of words. So law school seemed a likely solution. And then after law school, it made sense to me to find a way to combine my two worlds. Intellectual Property, at the intersection of technology and the law, was a natural area for me to explore. And IP has worked well for me.
At a time when our country seems so divided along political lines, when all issues seem so split on red and blue terms, there are many issues where we can find common ground. And it behooves us to look for those kinds of issues to foster and expand our common ground.
Patent reform was one such area issue. A few years ago, as a volunteer with IEEE-USA’s Intellectual Property Committee, I was doing a day of Hill visits to ask legislators to oppose patent litigation reform as it was being proposed in two bills before Congress. These bills were especially harmful to small companies and disruptive technologies. On our visits, first, we met with staff for Sen. Durbin, one of the most progressive members of the U.S. Senate. He was already opposed to these bills, so the conversation was about how IEEE-USA could help him. His staff wanted data, which we could supply.
Then we went to Sen. Cruz’s office, who is pretty much Sen. Durbin’s political polar opposite. One of his staffers told us patent reform was not even on their radar, so why should they care? We explained the problems with this flavor of patent reform and the potential harm to small companies and disruptive technologies. The staffer thanked us, and we left the office, thinking, well, we tried.
Six months later, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to markup one of the bills. Sen Durbin spoke, saying what we expected to hear, that “[T]he PATENT Act would end up hurting honest innovators all in the name of ending the problem of patent trolls.” A little while later, it was Sen. Cruz’ turn. He said: ”I found Senator Durbin’s remarks quite powerful and persuasive. We have in our economy a particular obligation . . . to protect the little guy who is inventing the next great invention that will transform the world . . . , and I fear that if we lean too far against the small patent holder that in turn will hamper innovation in our economy.”
And that is why I do what I do.
We do not choose our careers; instead, our careers choose us. As opportunities arise in our lives, the choices we make pull us toward our life’s calling. Growing up, I could not decide whether to study science or the arts, especially English and History. Theater had some appeal, but so did making a living. Medicine was out; I had volunteered in a hospital as a teen, and, well, no thank you. My father was an engineer and very persuasive. On a day trip for a Career Options event at Purdue University, we agreed that I should study math. After all, it bridges all forms of science and engineering. Fortunately, the University of Dayton was nearby and had a terrific mathematics program. UD is known for its strong engineering school, so UD’s mathematics program was quite applied in nature, which fit me quite well.
However, after four years of college, I was missing the world of words. So law school seemed a likely solution. And then after law school, it made sense to me to find a way to combine my two worlds. Intellectual Property, at the intersection of technology and the law, was a natural area for me to explore. And IP has worked well for me.