Ron Laurie has worked in Silicon Valley since before it had that name, initially as a systems engineer at Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., then as an intellectual property lawyer for thirty-five years at several major law firms, and most recently as an IP investment banking advisor focused on extracting maximum value from “intellectual capital” assets in complex corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions, technology spin-outs and multi-party joint venture relationships.As a lawyer, Ron was a founding partner of the Silicon Valley offices of Weil Gotshal, Irell & Manella and Skadden Arps. At Skadden, he founded and chaired the firm's IP Strategy and Transactions practice group and led IP teams in high-tech and life science deals worth over $50 billion in the aggregate. He has taught patent law and IP strategy at Stanford and Boalt (UC-Berkeley) law schools.In 2004, Ron retired from Skadden to launch Inflexion Point Strategy, the first IP-focused boutique investment banking advisory firm. With offices in Silicon Valley, Toronto, Taiwan and Singapore, Inflexion Point advises technology companies and institutional investors around the world in acquiring, divesting and investing in IP-rich companies, business units, technologies, and strategic intellectual capital assets in the form of patent portfolios, exclusive field-of-use rights, and related know-how and data. He is a Director and CIPO of Level 42 AI, a new-age medical device company that combines advanced vibroacoustic sensor technology with AI machine learning to accurately and rapidly detect a wide range of human disease conditions.Ron was an independent board member at Wi-LAN, Inc., one of the oldest and most successful publicly-traded patent licensing companies for six years. He served as Executive Chairman and CIPO of InventionShare, Inc., a new kind of early-stage technology investment fund that transforms "platform" technologies applicable to multiple vertical applications and markets into globally deployed innovation with high social impact. Ron chaired the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society and was on the advisory boards of the Hoover Institution Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity (IP2) at Stanford and the Certified Patent Valuation Analyst accreditation program. He has been listed as one of the world’s leading IP strategists by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) Magazine every year since the listing was created in 2008.