2022 speakers

Michael Waltrip is managing director of both PARC’s Intellectual Capital Management and Xerox’s Intellectual Property Strategy and Commercialisation groups, driving pure intellectual property (IP) monetisation for both PARC and the rest of Xerox, while leading the creation of policies, training and strategy for IP development and commercialisation across the organisations. Both groups are responsible for managing the processes and decisions around invention identification and review in addition to portfolio maintenance, leveraging the team’s more hands-on strategic role in portfolio development within Xerox’s core document technology-based business as well as newer growth areas lead by PARC. Michael applies his breadth of experience in venture investments, diligence and portfolio management, as well as complex commercial transactions, to lead a diverse set of activities ranging from early-stage portfolio assessment and development to the negotiation and structuring of transactions. On the transaction side, he has led a wide variety of engagements from large scale sponsored research with corporate sponsors such as Samsung, Dai Nippon Printing, 3M, SolarWorld, Microsoft and Alcon to the spin-out of PARC technology into venture-backed start-ups such as SolFocus, Powerset, Powercloud, and Metawave. The two groups lead all licensing for PARC and Xerox respectively, and work hand-in-hand with their legal counterparts with respect to Xerox’s patent assertion-based activities. Before joining PARC in 2005, Michael was counsel to the Acer Group’s venture funds in the US, where he was responsible for all legal matters for US investments, which included activities on both the investment and partnership sides of the business. Before his work in the venture capital industry, Michael worked within the Acer Group’s legal department supporting Acer’s US and Latin America subsidiaries. He has a background in the software industry and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Hastings College of the Law.