Marshall Phelps

Marshalll Phelps was appointed to Inventergy, Inc.'s Board of Directors on May 17, 2013. Phelps is a leading figure in the field of intellectual property management and performance, pioneering many of its leading strategies, generating unprecedented results and heading IP business and related activities at IBM and Microsoft. As CEO and Board Member of Article One Partners, he is actively engaged in helping businesses and governments improve patent quality and improve the Patent System. Phelps served as Corporate Vice President at IBM in the 1990s, 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. By actively licensing these and other IP rights, such as trade secrets and copyrights, he transformed a function that had previously been costly 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 Phelps served as 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 IP companies with over 60,000 patents and applications, extensive copyright holdings and numerous trademarks. In 2006, Phelps 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, now the largest acquirer of patents worldwide. His book, “Burning the Ships”, Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft, was published in 2009. Phelps has taught IP strategy at business, law or engineering schools at Duke, Cornell, UNC, and Berkeley and in Japan. He holds a B.A. and D.H.L from Muskingum University, an M.S. from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a J.D. from Cornell University Law School.