Marshall Phelps is one of the leading figures in the field of intellectual property management and performance and has been executive consultant and a senior adviser to Brody Berman Associates since 2010. He has pioneered many of IP’s leading strategies and best practices, and generated unprecedented results as head of IP business and strategy for IBM in the 1990s and then Microsoft in the 2000s.
Marshall served as Vice President at IBM, and was responsible for overseeing standards, telecommunications policy, industry relations, licensing, intellectual property law and management of a worldwide intellectual property portfolio of more than 35,000 patents and 8,500 trademarks. He transformed a function that had previously been associated with overhead to a $2 Billion annual profit center. Prior to heading IP business, he served IBM as Director of Government Relations in Washington and as Vice President of Asia Pacific operations in Tokyo.
From 2002-2010 Marshall was Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property and Licensing, Microsoft Corporation. At Microsoft, his duties entailed worldwide management of the company’s intellectual property portfolio, patent prosecution, licensing, standards and business development. He facilitated Microsoft’s emergence as one of the world’s largest and most successful IP-related businesses with over 60,000 patents and applications, extensive copyright holdings and numerous trademarks.
In 2006, Marshall was elected to the initial class of the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame. In 2001 he was founding partner with Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures, the largest acquirer of patents worldwide. His book, “Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft,” was published in 2009. Marshall has taught IP strategy at business, law or engineering schools at Duke, Cornell, UNC, Berkeley and in Japan. He holds a B.A. from Muskingum College, an M.S. from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a J.D. from Cornell University Law School. Marshal serves as a director and advisor to nine companies.