IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2013 - 17

Men play an important role, too.
People tend to think that role models
for women have to be other women but
we've shown in our work that men can
make excellent role models when they
demonstrate that you can have a variety of interests and still be successful
in computer science. Male role models
in the field who talk about hanging out
with friends or listening to music-
anything outside of the stereotype-
can make women feel at ease about
fitting in.

these stereotypes so that we can intervene before they form.
-Leslie Prives

Intellectual Property:
The Intersection of Law
and Innovation

WIE: What advice would you give to young
women interested in pursuing careers in
STEM fields who might be fearful of these
stereotypes?
Cheryan: I would advise them not
to simply believe the stereotypes but to
decide for themselves by taking a class
or shadowing someone who works in a
relevant job. The most common response
I hear from girls is "I didn't know this
would be so fun!" If you try it and don't
like it, then you move on, but no matter what you end up doing, having those
skills from taking a class or trying a
camp is not going to hurt you.
WIE: What does the future hold for you
and this area of research?
Cheryan: I have primarily focused
on college students, which is important
because a lot of people think that by
the time you're in college, it's too late to
change your perception of these stereotypes. We've shown that this is not true,
and now we want to look at younger ages
and see if these students also believe
in similar stereotypes. We've gone into
two high schools so far and done experiments on several hundred students, and
we're seeing that these stereotypes are
affecting them much in the same way
as they impact college students, even as
young as the ninth grade.
Something we're considering next is
going even younger and surveying middle school and even elementary school
students to see at what age it makes
the most sense to educate people about
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2013.2280374
Date of publication: 11 November 2013

An interview with Maura Moran
Maura Moran likes to tell her kids that
we don't find our careers, our careers
find us. "It's the opportunities that are
thrown at us and it's whether we choose
to take them-that's what marks our
path," she says.
In college, she was "one of those
kids who liked to read as much as they
liked science." She had an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the
University of Dayton, but something was
not right. She missed books, the written
word, and debate. She went to law school,
but once there realized that she missed
the sciences as well. But Moran's career
found her when, as a law student, she was
offered a clerkship at a patent law firm.
Fast forward to 2013. Over the course of
her career as an intellectual property (IP)
lawyer, Moran has practiced law at private
law firms, at large corporations such as
Digital Equipment Corporation, and small
corporations. For the last few years she has
practiced at her own firm, where she provides counsel to start-ups, individuals, universities, and corporations for innovation
in areas such as (but far from limited to)
software, networks, artificial intelligence,
nanotechnology, and medical devices.
The job, Moran says, is perfect for
her. "I get to deal with the clever people,
and I don't have to bail anyone out in
the middle of the night," she says. "I like
putting deals together. I like making it
work for people."
Still, she has words of caution for
anyone interested in law these days,
even patent law. "There are a lot of law
students. Some are struggling to get on
their feet with their first jobs," she says.
Her advice: You better know what you're
getting into and love what you're doing.

DeCEMBER 2013

The Metaphysics of Law
IP has been called the metaphysics of
law-it is that which you come up with
through the creative process. In the
landscape of the law, we are familiar
with real property (our homes) and personal property (our possessions). IP is
another area of property. And, Moran
says, "It is not tangible but it is just as
real." It is an asset that can be bought,
sold, and licensed, and, like other property, certain rules need to be followed in
order to obtain and maintain the asset.
Conceptually, Moran explains, when
you engage in business, you're in the
business of creating or exploiting IP.
In other words, in order to be in business, you've got to have an idea. In that
early phase of a company's development,
"the company will protect its work product with the form of IP known as trade
secrets. Eventually, though, in order to
make a profit, the company will have to
disclose some of its confidential information." That is where other areas of
IP-such as patents, trademarks, and
copyright-come into play.
"I like helping people harness their
creations, to figure out how to implement their business strategies with the
tools that they've got," Moran says. "For
example, if they don't have the tools, then
how are they going to get them? That is
another area where I can help. Are they
going to develop the tools themselves or
are they going to acquire them? If they
are going to make them in-house, then
they'll want to protect them because
they've put investment into it. If they are
going to acquire the tools, then they're
going to want to acquire them in a particular way-through license or purchase-and then those areas will need
to have some paper. Further, once people
start using an IP asset, I can help them to
perfect rights in the IP, to turn the asset
into a revenue stream, or to enforce their
rights in the asset."
If a company wants to "develop primacy" in a particular field, it's going to
want to start protecting its innovations
in that field: "You might choose to keep
exclusive the innovations or license them
to other companies; you might work with
standards bodies to encourage others in

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2013