Ursery, Leia G.

Derek Lam is an associate in the Intellectual Property Department. He joined the firm in 2011.

Past Experience

Mr. Lam has extensive professional experience as a software engineer for IBM Corporation. His responsibilities included implementation of a database-backed enterprise document management system in collaboration with development teams, test teams and globalization teams. His work also involved service as a technical lead for an early deployment center directing engineers and project managers, and specialized engagements for customers leading multiple engineers and interfacing with high-level executives. Mr. Lam has multiple patents and pending applications based on his results at IBM.

While attending law school, Mr. Lam won a Book Award for the top grade in his patents class. He also received honors and a Best Brief Award in his legal research & writing class, and served as a staff member on the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, and Technology. At MIT, Mr. Lam served as a grader for the class in automata, computability, and complexity, a tutor for the Eta Kappa Nu honor fraternity, and a laboratory assistant for the laboratory in software engineering. Mr. Lam’s graduate thesis work was done jointly with the MIT Media Lab and the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Additionally, he has presented at computing conferences across the United States.

Professional Activities

Mr. Lam is a member of the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property section, Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts, Boston Bar Association, Boston Patent Law Association and National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

Selected Publications and Patents

• Lam, D.; Silva, A.; Wang, P.; Weir, R.; Schirmer, A.; Oral, T., Meeting scheduling to minimize inconvenience of meeting participants, U.S. 20090132329, 2009.
• Dreyfus, M.; Lam, D.; Muller, M.; Silva, A.; Wang, P.; Weir, R., Processing electronic messages according to sender classification, U.S. 20090106370, 2009.
• Lam, D.; Silva, A.; Wang, P.; Weir, R., Detection of missing recipients in electronic messages, U.S. 20090100183, 2009.
• Rohall, S.L.; Lam, D.; Stern, M.K.; Moody, P.; Gruen, D.; Schmandt, C., Method of summarization of threads in electronic mail, U.S. 7,392,280, 2008.
• Lam, D.; Rohall, S.L.; Schmandt, C.; and Stern, M.K., “Exploiting Email Structure to Improve Summarization,” poster session, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) 2002.
• Gruen, D.; Rohall, S.L.; Petigara, N.; and Lam, D., “In Your Space” Displays for Casual Awareness, demonstration, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) 2000.