The Boston Patent Law Association (BPLA) recognized this year’s Honorees at the 12th Annual Invented Here! celebratory event that took place on Wednesday, November 9, 2022, at the Exchange Conference Center in Boston’s Seaport District. The BPLA’s Invented Here! Committee received over 40 patent nominations this year, covering a wide range of sciences and technologies. Among the nominations, 20 were selected as Honorees to represent our innovation community.

With over 70 guests in attendance, the evening kicked off with a reception featuring posters of the front pages of the patents for the Honorees to stand by and describe their inventions to guests. The Honorees included inventors, company managers, patent attorneys, and other representatives of the 20 selected patents.

Following the reception, a Welcome Ceremony of the 2022 celebratory event began with remarks from BPLA President Keith Toms, Partner at McCarter & English. Keith also welcomed and introduced guest speaker Brian Hanlon, Assistant Commissioner for Patents at the USPTO, to provide remarks. Mark Solomon, Invented Here! Co-Chair, and President of Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, then took the podium to introduce the sponsors, explain the nomination and selection process of Honorees and Featured Honorees, and kick off the Honoree roll call.

Invented Here! Co-Chair Nicholas Zachariades, Counsel at Fox Rothschild, and BPLA member and Past President Deirdre Sanders, a Principal at Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, led a rollcall of this year’s 20 Honorees, during which each had an opportunity to give the audience a brief presentation about his or her respective invention and how the invention improves the human condition. (See listing below).

Following the roll call of Honoree, this year’s three Featured Honorees were called to the stage for a fireside chat with our celebrity interviewer, Carey Goldberg, Boston Bureau Chief of Bloomberg News. During the fireside chat, Ms. Goldberg led the Featured Honorees through detailed discussions about their respective inventions through probing and interesting questions. Beyond the details of the inventions, the Featured Honorees also explained how their inventions work, how their inventions improve the human condition, what motivated the inventors to conceive of their inventions, etc. Members of the audience submitted questions, including a question about whether a mentor helped the Featured Honorees along their career paths, which provided interesting stories behind the inventions.