Sally M. Abel is Chair of the Trademark Group at Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm specializing in technology and life sciences matters. Ms. Abel is resident in the firm's Mountain View office. She focuses on international trademark and trade name counseling, including the development and management of international trademark portfolios and trademark rights on-line.
Ms. Abel has repeatedly won international, national, state and Silicon Valley accolades as a preeminent trademark lawyer. She was recently named "Most Highly Regarded Individual," by International Who's Who Legal Trademarks 2010, an honor reserved to 15 trademark lawyers, only 3 of whom are from the U.S.
Ms. Abel's clients have included:
- Cisco Systems
- Google
- Novellus Systems " NVIDIA
- Oracle America (Sun Microsystems)
- Symantec
Ms. Abel was a member of the Board of Directors of the International Trademark Association (INTA) from May 1998 to May 2000. She chaired INTA's Internet Subcommittee for two years, from 1996 to 1998, developed and chaired INTA's Enforcement Committee, and currently serves on INTA's International Amicus Committee and the organization's Panel of Neutrals. Ms. Abel was a pioneer in the international debate over trademark rights on the Internet, including serving as INTA's representative on the 11-member International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC), the international body organized by the Internet Society, to restructure the domain name system. At the invitation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Ms. Abel also participated in WIPO's First Meeting of Consultants on Trademarks and Internet Domain Names held in Geneva in February, 1997. Through WIPO and the National Arbitration Forum, she has served as a neutral panelist on numerous domain name disputes brought under ICANN's UDRP system. She writes and lectures internationally on trademarks and the Internet and teaches international trademark law and practice at Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley). She is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Computer History Museum and of the Advisory Council to the J. Thomas McCarthy Institute for Intellectual Property and Technology Law.