2024 speakers

Bridget Smith is Assistant General Counsel and Head of Intellectual Property at Relativity Space, an American aerospace manufacturing company that develops manufacturing technologies, launch vehicles, and rocket engines for commercial orbital launch services using 3D metal printers.

Before joining Relativity this year, she was a partner at Lowenstein & Weatherwax, where she focused her practice on client counseling and post-grant proceedings before the USPTO and appeals to the Federal Circuit and regional circuit courts of appeal. And before that, she was a partner at Knobbe Martens and co-chair of the firm’s Patent Office Trials Practice Group. Over the course of her career, she has successfully represented both petitioners and patent owners in around 160 AIA trials, lead a successful precedential win at the Ninth Circuit in an appeal from a trademark infringement case, and had her amicus work on behalf of an inventors’ group favorably cited in the Supreme Court case United States v. Arthrex.

Prior to her legal career, she worked as a process engineer and a software engineer at Motorola Semiconductor and, later, as a data scientist at a business software startup acquired by SAP. She earned her JD, cum laude, from Arizona State University and her Master’s degree and Bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in Chemical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.
She currently serves as chair of the American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law’s Patent System Planning Committee and co-chair of the Orange County chapter of ChIPs, an international non-profit legal diversity organization dedicated to advancing women in intellectual property.