K-CLEC Executive-in-Residence

Gonzaga Law's unique Executive-in-Residence program allows faculty and students to work with and learn from an experienced business expert who will lend their specialized industry knowledge to our learning community. The Executive-in-Residence delivers and attends K-CLEC-related lectures, is available for student consultation, and otherwise enriches the programming and student support offered in the areas of business, technology, and innovation. The role is a part-time affiliation without a faculty designation with a one-year renewable appointment.

K-CLEC is fortunate to have Britten Sessions as our Executive in Residence due to his instrumental role in creating our IP and Trademark Clinic, providing students with hands-on experience in intellectual property and trademark law.

Meet Britten Sessions

Britten Sessions has years of experience in every stage of the patent process, including early-stage IP opportunities, strategic preparation and procurement of patents and alignment of patent portfolios with business strategies.

As a principal attorney at Zilka-Kotab PC, he provides patent and licensing-related legal counsel to groups of all sizes – from individual inventors to Fortune 500-sized companies. Mr. Sessions has advised on hundreds of patent enforcement, acquisition, licensing and other monetization transactions. To that end, he has assisted companies in monetizing patent assets yielding over $120 million in returns. Additionally, he has assisted in turning unmarketable pending patent portfolios into viable revenue streams supported by seven to eight-digit transactions.

Additionally, Mr. Sessions is the founder and supervising attorney of the Intellectual Property Clinic at Gonzaga University School of Law. In that capacity, he teaches IP-related classes, and manages student/clientele interactions with the IP Clinic. He previously was Associated Dean of Intellectual Property at Lincoln Law School of San Jose, where he also founded and directed its IP Clinic, and the school’s MLS and LLM IP-focused programs. He has also authored several peer-reviewed publications and many IP-related books and textbooks.

Mr. Sessions has been repeatedly recognized as one of the world's top 300 IP Strategist by Intellectual Asset Management, and ranked by Super Lawyers and Silicon Valley Business Journal's "Top 40 under 40." Further, he was chair of the high-technology section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association for the 2016 year.

While Mr. Sessions specializes in every stage of the patent process, one key differentiator is his expertise in early-stage IP opportunities, which combines his talents of early recognition of winning technology, strategic procurement of enforceable patents and development of licensing-focused business strategies from the ground up.