2025 Mark T. Banner Award

Nominations are Closed

This award is for an individual or group that has made an impact on intellectual property law and/or practice. Candidates will have expressed a clear passion and enthusiasm for, and advanced the practice, profession, and/or substance of, IP law through extraordinary contributions to, among other things, teaching, scholarship, innovation, legislation, advocacy, bar or other association activities, or the judiciary.

The award is open to the widest range of individuals and there is no requirement to be a lawyer or ABA member. Self-nominations are welcome.

Announcing the Mark T. Banner Award Recipient

The ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law
is proud to announce the 2025 Mark T. Banner Award Honoree

Horacio Gutierrez

Horacio E. Gutierrez, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Legal, and Chief Compliance Officer of The Walt Disney Company, will be the recipient of the 2025 ABA IPL Mark T. Banner Award. This prestigious accolade will be presented during our 2025 ABA IPL Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., from April 30 to May 2, 2025 and will recognize Mr. Gutierrez for all his contributions to the legal field, including being named one of the "Top 50 Most Powerful Latino Leaders" and a leading in-house lawyer by various legal publications.

Join us during the Section Luncheon with the
2025 Mark T. Banner Award Presentation
 

IPLSPRING
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel
Arlington, VA

The Mark T. Banner Award, established in honor of the late Mark T. Banner, former ABA-IPL Section Chair, is presented to an individual or individuals who have made an impact on IP law and/or practice. Winners of this award have expressed a clear passion and enthusiasm for, and advanced the practice, profession and/or substance of IP law through extraordinary contributions to, among, other things, teaching, scholarship, innovation, legislation, advocacy, bar or other association activities, or the judiciary. Learn more about the Mark T. Banner Award.

About Mark Banner

The late Mark Banner was chair of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law from 2002 to 2003. He sought, demanded, and attained the very best from himself and everyone. These characteristics made him and those around him seek excellence in all they did: advocacy, work, relationships, intellectual property matters, and work for the ABA-IPL Section.

Mark was widely recognized not only as one of the best IP trial lawyers in the United States, but also as one of the country’s best trial lawyers, period.His work transcended narrow principles of IP decisional law and wove in the fabric of general law to reflect the reality of his legal positions in a way that was reasonable and cogent as well as easily understood. Mark Banner’s extraordinary gift, in addition to his trial expertise, was in teaching, where he always varied the performance to conform to a student’s style. He often said that teaching was his “labor of love.”

The ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law honors these stars of intellectual property law who have risen to the top of the profession.

Past Award Recipients 

2024 Award Recipient

Mark A. Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology

2023 Award Recipient

Ralph Oman, Former U.S. Register of Copyrights Pravel Professorial Lecturer in Intellectual Property and Patent Law, George Washington Law School, Retired

2022 Award Recipients

William F. Lee, Partner, WilmerHale

2021 Award Recipients

Hon. James D. Smith, Chief IP Counsel at Ecolab Inc., and former first Chief Judge of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Karyn A. Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel of the Motion Picture Association, and former Register of Copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office

Philip G. Hampton, II, Senior Partner and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer in the D.C. office of Polsinelli PC. and former Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

2019 Award Recipient

Robert A. Armitage
Consultant on intellectual property strategy and policy matters and member of the board of directors for the American Intellectual Property Law Education Foundation. 

2018 Award Recipients

Simon Tam 
Musician, Author, Entrepreneur, and Activist

John Connell 
Partner, Archer & Greiner P.C.

Ron Coleman 
Partner, Archer & Greiner P.C.

Joel G. MacMull 
Associate, Archer & Greiner P.C.

2017 Award Recipients

Hon. Lucy H. Koh 
U. S. District Court, Northern District of California

Don W. Martens 
Founding Partner, Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear

Dr. Kate Darling 
MIT Media Lab Research Specialist, Harvard Berkman Center Fellow, Robot Ethics Expert

2015 Award Recipients

Jane C. Ginsburg 
Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, Columbia University Law School.

Donald R. Dunner 
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, L.L.P

Tony Dutra 
Legal Editor, Bloomberg BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal

2014 Award Recipients

Hayden Gregory 
Legislative Consultant, ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law

Hon. Paul R. Michel 
Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Kenneth D. Crews 
Lawyer, Professor, and International Copyright Consultant

2013 Award Recipients

Hon. Pauline Newman 
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Click here to see Judge Newman's acceptance of the 2013 Mark T. Banner Award

Christina Bohannan 
Professor, University of Iowa College of Law

2012 Award Recipients

Hon. James F. Holderman 
Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Read Chief Judge James F. Holderman's Tribute to Mark T. Banner

2011 Award Recipients

Marybeth Peters 
Former Register of Copyrights

Judge Richard Linn 
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit