2020 speakers

Brett Alten is Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Brett focuses on developing and driving all aspects of HPE’s intellectual property strategy, including patent, trademark, and copyright portfolio development, the company’s IP monetization and transactional practices, IP analysis, and operations, as well as the open-source program office.

Before joining the HPE Legal Department in 2017, Brett served in numerous leadership roles in technology legal departments. He joined HPE from Tesla – which acquired SolarCity, the largest solar provider in the U.S. — where he served as Deputy General Counsel and Head for IP.  He also served as the Head of Intellectual Property for Dropbox and as Director of Patent Development and Intellectual Property Enforcement at Apple.  He held positions with the law firms Morrison & Foerster LLP, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP, and Fish & Neave.

Brett received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Clark University; a master’s degree and a doctorate in physics from The John Hopkins University; and a law degree from Fordham University’s School of Law.  He is licensed to practice in California, New York, and DC and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, where he taught physics and started a vocational school. Since then, Brett has volunteered in numerous other countries, including Peru, Kenya, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and most recently South Africa.