Bruce Lehman

Bruce A. Lehman (born September 19, 1945) served from August 5, 1993 through 1998 as the United States Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Nominated by President Bill Clinton on April 23, 1993, and confirmed by the United States Senate on August 5, 1993. During this short period of time, he was responsible for significant changes to the United States patent law.
Lehman's streak of successful changes was finally ended when he tried to move control of the U.S. Copyright Office from the Library of Congress to his department.
After leaving the USPTO, Lehman founded the International Intellectual Property Institute, a non-profit, non-governmental organization.

He went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, receiving a B.A. in 1967 and a J.D. in 1970.

He was named "Lawyer of the Year" 1994 by National Law Journal.

In 1996 he served as the head of the U.S. delegation to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the December 1996 Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighboring Rights Questions.

He also chaired the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights of the National Information Infrastructure Task Force.

Lehman was asked by the President on September 5, 1997, to serve on an interim basis as Acting Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On June 16, 1997 he was named one of the 100 most influential men and women in Washington by the National Journal.

He has been legal counsel to:

• the Wisconsin State Legislature
• United States House of Representatives (nine years)
• Committee on the Judiciary and Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice, in the drafting of the 1976 Copyright Act, the 1980 Computer Software Amendments, and 1982 amendments to the Patent Laws.

He has also worked as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, as a partner at Swidler & Berlin (10 years), as an officer in the U.S. Army and is currently a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia.

On February 7, 2006, Mr. Lehman was honored as one of 23 initial inductees to the newly created International IP Hall of Fame, a project sponsored by the London-based Intellectual Property Asset Management Magazine.

Currently, he is President and Chairman of the International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), a non-profit, non-partisan economic development organization based in Washington, D.C., and is President of the U.S. Committee for the WIPO. Concurrently, Mr. Lehman serves as an expert witness in intellectual property and advises clients on intellectual property related matters, both domestically and internationally.

He continues to fight against submarine patents.

Lehman is openly gay. He was the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.