Light Years IP

Ron Layton

Founder & Chief Executive

Ron Layton has combined successful careers in economic development and IP business to design the Light Years IP vision of engaging IP business techniques to reduce poverty and secure income for poor people through export trade in developing countries. Since forming LYIP as an NGO in 1999, Ron Layton has been creating mechanisms for poor producers in developing countries to improve the amount and security of export income from commodities and finished products. This process utilizes all forms of IP to assert the right to income from intangible values created and owned by poor countries. LYIP also assists with the products of innovation, including inventions, tribal names and all forms of designs, some traditional and mostly modern.

Ron’s has experience implementing projects in IP Value Capture opportunity in more than 20 African countries. The impact upon poverty has affected millions of African farmers and producers.

Ron has acted as IP consultant to producer groups, exporters and tribal groups, to businesses in fair trade and sustainable development, to the World Bank and the USPTO, and to Governments as different as Ethiopia, Niue and Bermuda. In 2004, the World Bank published a book titled "Poor People’s Knowledge" that included coverage of his work on IP and Poverty Alleviating Trade. In February 2004, Ron was elected as a Global Fellow by the Ashoka Foundation, recognition as a leading social entrepreneur working on a global level.

Ron is educated in economics and mathematics and worked as lead economist on numerous development projects in more than 20 developing countries for UNDP, ADAB, SPC, the Commonwealth and many governments. He has specialized in Intellectual Property for 25 years and in Intellectual Property for Development for 15 of those years. He began in 1977-80, originating and implementing jurisdictional Intellectual Property solutions in developing countries with very limited and weak economies. He led a project covering analysis and development of jurisdictional Intellectual Property sector in several countries where IP produced over 60% of government income and over 80% of export income. To acquire direct understanding of the role of branding and other Intellectual Property in Trade, he added ten years of commercial experience in earning export income, successfully distributing film product and derivative consumer products to over 100 world markets.

• http://www.ashoka.org/fellow/2987

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Pauline Tiffen

Director

Pauline has worked for academic institutions, mainstream and alternative business, the voluntary sector, co-operative and community and development organizations North and South, in advisory, executive and non-executive positions. She has demonstrated an exceptional ability to nurture cross-cultural economic exchange and to develop new forms of business over more than fifteen years of work in the alternative trading sector in traditional and non-traditional commodities.

Pauline was the founder of two pioneering fair trade companies: Cafedirect and The Day Chocolate Company, including the supply chain/farmer participation. From 1989-1997, she served as the Executive and Managing Director of Twin Trading, Ltd. Pauline was a Founding Board member of the International Federation of Alternative Trade (IFAT) and, since 2003, Board Member and adviser of the North American Fair Trade Federation, a network of 200 innovative Fair Trade businesses.

Since 2000 she has been an Operations Adviser to the World Bank, creating ways for primary producers and local financial institutions in Africa and Latin America to access financial products to hedge their exposure and risk. She has also been working at the WB and International Finance Corporation on corporate social responsibility and regional branding/marketing pilot projects in Central America.

Pauline holds a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan; is a Fulbright Scholar and has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation NGO Fellowship for her work in conflict in trade in Africa. Pauline is multi-lingual, and conducts workshops throughout Africa, teaching IP Value Capture.

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Mohammed Garad

Senior Consultant

Attorney Mohammed Garad has over 30 year's experience in international trade promotion and business investment in development projects in developing countries, with particular emphasis in Africa.

Mohammed’s career has spanned international law and business with in-depth trade experience. He started his career in international trade at the Ethiopian Customs in 1973 where he was rapidly promoted into increasingly responsible positions from tax attorney to chief prosecutor; manager of customs import-export operations; and deputy commissioner. He was elected and served as President of the African Tax Administrators’ Association (ATAA) in 1982 under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. In 1983 he was elected vice chairman of the Permanent Technical Committee at the Customs Cooperation Council (CCC) in Brussels, Belgium where he was one of the pioneers among international customs officers engaged in drafting the Harmonized System, which today has become the standard tariff nomenclature adapted by all countries.

He is an attorney whose legal career ranges from the prosecution of illicit traders in Ethiopia to teaching legal research in the United States and working as general counsel on major investment acquisitions in the Middle East. Mohammed is also a trade consultant who has been intimately connected to the coffee industry for years. He was closely involved in the determination and collection of the Ethiopian coffee surtax. In 1996, he played a pivotal role in convincing and organizing the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association to shift its booth from an obscure small stand to a large and visible promotional pavilion during every annual SCAA conference. He was managing Coffee Originals, a company in Alexandria, VA engaged in importing coffee from Ethiopia until he joined Light Years IP.

Mohammed served as Ethiopia’s Trade and Investment Counselor in Washington DC from 1993 to 2001, during which time he actively lobbied for the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) by providing vital trade facts and preparing testimonies to be presented before the US Congress and the Clinton Administration. During his diplomatic tenure, Mohammed played a major role in promoting Ethiopia’s exports to the United States and convincing many American business executives and Ethio-American entrepreneurs to invest in Ethiopia. He co-founded the Ethio-American Trade and Investment Counsel (EATIC) to create a unique public private enterprise to reach out and advocate for active bilateral trade and investment participation.

Educated in law at Haile Sellasie 1st University and Harvard Law Schools, Mohammed has dedicated most of his professional life to international trade and investment activity, with a passion for the promotion of Ethiopian coffee.

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Dr. Margaret Brindle

Director of Education

Meg Brindle, PhD is Associate Professor of Management in the Public and International Affairs Department at George Mason University. She has taught over 100 MBA and MPA courses in organizational management and health policy at George Mason and Carnegie Mellon University, in the MBA and Public Policy Schools and participated in establishing the Carnegie Mellon, DC campus curriculum. Dr. Brindle has worked with Light Years IP for two years conducting research; grant writing; and writing a book with Ron Layton on Intellectual Property Value Capture, and has participated in workshops in IP Business Strategies in Lusaka, Zambia and Kampala, Uganda, and Kingstown, Barbados. Dr. Brindle has published two books: Managing Power through Lateral Networking; and Taking Charge of Management Fads: A New Look at an Old Force. Her most recent publication, with Ron Layton, Ming-ru Chu and Alison Dressler, for Light Years IP is Intellectual Property Value Capture: Caribbean Opportunities for Higher Income, 2010. In summer, 2010, she will lead a student trip to Nairobi, Kenya for peer-peer training with the Maasai.

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John Kilama

International IP Specialist

Dr. Kilama has expertise in several effective partnerships between multinational corporations and institutions in developing nations. Born in Uganda, Dr. Kilama received a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Arizona. Dr. Kilama worked at the DuPont Corp. and is the holder of several patents. He was on the Board of Directors of Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors, Inc. in Washington, DC. Concurrently, he is a Director and Founder of KICG, an organization with a mission to facilitate good management of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) at institutional and national levels in emerging markets while serving on the Board of Pytica, Inc. He is an Advisor of Global Health at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Scientific Advisor to the Institute of One World Health and the International Organization for Chemistry in Development (IOCD), Belgium.

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Michael Frankel

FOUNDER AND MANAGING PARTNER, FRANKEL LAWYERS

Michael Frankel has been practicing law for 30 years in Intellectual Property, Media, Entertainment, Indigenous Australian Law, and Public Policy Law. He is a partner in Frankel Lawyers and between 1985 and 1995 he was a member of the Federal Attorney-General's Copyright Law Review Committee. Mr. Frankel played a key role in the introduction of Moral Rights protection for Authors and Creators into Copyright Act. He is currently a member of the Media and Communications Committee, and is a trustee of Australian Society of Authors Benevolent Fund, since 2005. Michael was awarded Order of Australia AM, for his contribution to arts, cultural and Intellectual Property rights, media, law and Indigenous rights. In recognition of his contribution to authors and publishing, Michael was honored with Life Membership to the Australian Society of Authors.

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Getachew Mengistie

FMR. DIRECTOR GENERAL OF ETHIOPIAN IPO

Getachew Mengistie became interested in Intellectual Property immediately after his graduation from the Addis Ababa University Law School in 1986 when he joined the Ethiopian Science and Technology Commission. He became the team leader of a select group of lawyers who were entrusted with the task of undertaking a study to establish the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office (EIPO).When EIPO was established in 2003, Getachew became its first Director General. Teaming up with Ron Layton from Light Years IP, Getachew led the Ethiopian Fine Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative from 2004 to 2008. In 2006, he was selected as a Yale World Fellow and completed an Intellectual Property program at Yale University. Getachew is currently working as an Intellectual Property consultant, training and assisting a number of African countries with their Intellectual Property policies and regulations.

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