Mark VB Partridge is the founder of Partridge IP Law PC, a Chicago-based firm with a global practice helping corporations, entrepreneurs and creative professionals to protect brands, content and ideas.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, he has over 30 years’ experience with litigation and transactions involving trademarks, copyright and internet issues. As trial counsel, Mr Partridge has successfully represented domestic and international corporations in bench and jury trials and appellate proceedings in the United States, and has coordinated international enforcement and litigation efforts around the world.

He has been lead IP counsel in major corporate transactions, helping clients to complete divestitures and licensing of famous brands in domestic and international deals valued in excess of $2 billion. He has also developed strategic plans for the selection, protection and enforcement of corporate brands and copyrights.

Mr Partridge is known for his internet expertise. In 1998 he was selected by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) as an expert on the Internet Domain Name Process. As a WIPO panellist, Mr Partridge has issued over 180 Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy decisions, including three of the most frequently cited cases. As the American Bar Association representative to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, he has served on committees and working groups to help to develop rights protection mechanisms for new internet domains.

Mr Partridge is committed to the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to resolve disputes. He has served as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association and as a Lanham Act mediator in Illinois federal court. As an advocate, Mr Partridge has leveraged his ADR experience to help clients to achieve favourable, cost-effective mediated settlements.

Mr Partridge is the author of many articles and the books Alternative Dispute Resolution: An Essential Competency for Lawyers (Oxford University Press, 2009), Guiding Rights: Trademarks, Copyrights and the Internet (2003) and Trademark and Copyright Litigation: Forms and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2011). He has served as a director of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, president of the Lawyers Club of Chicago and an adjunct professor at the John Marshall Law School, teaching advanced courses in trademark law, litigation and transactions.