Ryan Abbott, M.D., Esq., FCIArb, has mediated and arbitrated domestic and international disputes with collectively billions of dollars at stake. This has included disputes between some of the world’s largest companies represented by some of the most renown law firms, as well as disputes involving unrepresented individuals experiencing interpersonal disputes within family businesses. He has particular proficiency in the fields of intellectual property and health care, and offers unique experience in such matters as biologics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, medical and life sciences, computer technology and distributed ledger technology. Dr. Abbott is also the co-creator of the JAMS AI Dispute Resolution Rules. He divides his time primarily between Los Angeles, New York, and London.

Dr. Abbott has a reputation for rigorous preparation, engagement and adaptability. As an arbitrator, he focuses on delivering fair and just outcomes efficiently and quickly. As a mediator, he takes a commercially oriented approach, aided by his diverse practice and educational background. Dr. Abbott firmly believes that mediation and arbitration provides all parties with the opportunity to achieve better outcomes than litigation—financial benefits, risk mitigation, and saved opportunity costs. He is driven to solve problems, and to help parties with ongoing collaborations to preserve or rebuild important relationships. 

Dr. Abbott has served as partner at a litigation firm and general counsel of biotechnology companies. In these capacities, he has substantial dispute resolution experience as outside and inside counsel for both claimants and respondents. Dr. Abbott has also been an expert testifying witness in state and federal courts on patent infringement and invalidity, as well as a medical expert witness. He has also worked as an expert for the European Commission, the United Kingdom Parliament, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

Dr. Abbott is a licensed physician and patent attorney in the United States (California and New York) and a solicitor advocate in England and Wales. He is board certified by the American Board of Legal Medicine. In addition to serving as a JAMS neutral, he is a CPR, IACT, SIAC, WIPO and UKIPO panelist, a CEDR-accredited mediator and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb). 

Dr. Abbott is professor of law and health sciences at the University of Surrey School of Law and adjunct assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is a graduate of the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Yale Law School. Dr. Abbott publishes and lectures on issues related to dispute resolution, as well as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and information and communication technologies.

He is also a Title IX external Hearing Officer and Adjudicator for colleges in sexual assault and harassment cases, including training in college-specific Policies & Procedures. 

Representative Matters

• Business Commercial
Breach of contract, breach and dissolutions of partnership and joint venture agreements, licensing agreements, fraud
• Employment Law
Wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress
• Health Care
Federal/state Government and Qui Tam False Claims cases; class actions; employment and other business disputes concerning physician practice breakups; business and employment disputes between physicians and hospitals; IP dispute between university and pharma parties; employment claims by pharma sales reps; insurance coverage for malpractice, medical benefits payments and other claims; med mal cases
• Insurance
Coverage, bad faith, first-party claims
• Intellectual Property
Patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret and confidential information, infringement, misappropriation, validity, license disputes, ownership, regulatory filings, technology transfer
• Professional Liability
Negligence, billing disputes, malpractice, accounting

Honors, Memberships, and Professional Activities

Memberships

• Member, Global Health Law Committee of the International Law Association (ILA) 2019 – present
• Editor, Landslide Magazine, published by the American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), 2019–present
• Mediation Provider, UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO), June 2019–present
• Academic College Reviewer, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College, 2017– 2020
• Member, European Commission Expert Working Group on New Technologies Formation, 2018–2019
• Member, Judge Paul R. Michel Intellectual Property American Inn of Court, 2014–2016
• Board of Governors, Valley Community Healthcare, 2013–2016

Awards and Honors

• Strategy IAM Global Leader 300, 2023 & 2024
• IAM Strategy 300, 2022, 2023, 2024 
• Outstanding IP Practitioner, World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR), 2022 & 2023
• 50 Most Influential People in IP, Managing Intellectual Property, 2019 & 2021

Select Recent Lectures

• 2020 LSPN Connect; Speaker: Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property in the Life Sciences
• 2019 Israel Patent Office; Speaker: Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property
• 2019 Israel Patent Office, Israel Innovation Authority, WIPO; Panelist & Speaker: International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Intellectual Property—Connecting the Bits
• 2019 Intellectual Property Office in the United Kingdom, in co-operation with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO); Speaker: Conference on the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on intellectual property (IP)
• 2019 International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Intellectual Property – Connecting the Bits; Panelist: Applications of AI - New Business and IP Strategies
• 2019 Moho D-Day Summit; Presenter: The Future of Work
• 2019 EUIPO: IP Mediation Conference; Presenter: The Future of Online Mediation – AI Mediators and AI Evaluative Tools
• 2018 3rd International Convention on The Economy of Innovation, AIPPI; Panelist: Traditional Medicine—The Influence of IP on Commercial Use and Economic Aspects
• 2018 Oxford Faculty of Law, Business Law Workshop, Inventive Machines and the Evolving Nature of Innovation
• 2018 Office of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Economy, Institute of Intellectual Property
  Luxembourg; Presenter: 11th Annual Luxembourg Intellectual Property Day: Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Challenges
• 2018 Stanford Law School; Presenter: We Robot Conference: Everything Is Obvious; Should Robots Pay Taxes? Tax Policy in the Age of Automation
• 2018 King’s Transnational Law Summit; Moderator: A World of Risk: Health, Technology and the Human Life; Panelist: Us and Them: Living With Robots
• 2018 University of Surrey; Chair: Surrey Workshop on the Regulation of AI
• 2018 University of San Diego; Presenter: PatCon 8: The Annual Patent Conference; Everything Is Obvious
• 2018 King’s College London; Guest Lecturer: Transnational Intellectual Property
• 2018 ICEVOX; Presenter: Cybercrime and Security, Bitcoin and the Power of Decentralized Prediction Markets
• 2018 WIPO/Rospatent/Skolkovo; Panelist: International Conference on Intellectual Property in the New Technological Order, International Protections for Computer-Generated Works
• 2017 IBC Leal; Moderator and Panelist: Standards, Patents and Competition Conference, Future of Patenting for AI-Created Innovations
• 2017 CEIPI/WIPO/INPI Lecturer: Advanced Course on Intellectual Property, Technology Transfer and Licensing
  Intellectual Property Management in Traditional Medical Knowledge
• 2017 Leeds School of Law; Roundtable Participant: Personalized Medicine and the Law
• 2017 CEIPI/BETA/I3PM Conference; Speaker: Intellectual Property and Digitalization: Challenges for Intellectual Property Management, Creative Computers and the Future of Patent Law
• 2017 Florida State University; Law 7930: Global Health and Pharmaceutical Regulation, Global Regulation of Off-Label Drug Use and Traditional Medicine
• 2017 Czech Parliament Committee on Health; Roundtable Presenter, U.S. Regulation and Legislation on Traditional Chinese Medicine

Publications

• "Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction," Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence, Edward Elgar (Ryan Abbott ed., 2022)
• "Disrupting Creativity: Copyright Law in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence" (with Elizabeth Rothman), Florida Law Review (Forthcoming 2023)
• "Putting the Artificial Intelligence in Alternative Dispute Resolution: How AI Rules Will Become ADR Rules" (with Brinson Elliott), 2 Amicus Curiae 4(3) (2023)
• "AI-Generated Output and Intellectual Property Rights: Takeaways from the Artificial Inventor Project" (with Elizabeth Rothman), 45 European Intellectual Property Review (2023)
• "DABUS Down Under—AI at Work in Australia and Around the World" (with Claire Gregg), 129 Intellectual Property Forum 32 (2022)
• "A Brief Analysis of DABUS, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Patent Law" (with Rita Matulionyte and Paul Nolan), 125 Intellectual Property Forum 10 (2021)
• "The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law," Cambridge University Press (2020)
• "Punishing Artificial Intelligence: Legal Fiction or Science Fiction" (with Alex Sarch), UC Davis Law Review (Forthcoming 2019)
• “Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Intellectual Property: Protecting Computer-Generated Works in the United Kingdom,” Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Digital Technologies, Edward Elgar (Tanya Aplin, ed.) (2019)
• "What Crypto Exchanges, Holders Can Learn From QuadrigaCX" (co-author), Law360 (2019)
• "Everything is Obvious," 66 UCLA. L. REV. 2 (2019)
• "Managing Disputes in the Life Sciences," Nature Biotechnology (2018)
• "Should Robots Pay Taxes? Tax Policy in the Age of Automation," 12 Harv. L. & Pol. Rev. 145 (2018)
• "The Reasonable Computer: Disrupting the Paradigm of Tort Liability," 86 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1 (2018)
• “The Sentinel Initiative as a Cultural Commons” In Governing Medical Research Commons, Cambridge University Press (Katherine Strandburg, et al., eds.) (2017)
• "I Think, Therefore I Invent: Creative Computers and the Future of Patent Law," 57 B.C. L. Rev. 1079 (2016)
• Republished in part: "Autonomous Machines and Their Inventions." Mitteilungen, 429-437 (2017)
• Republished in part: "Patenting the Output of Autonomously Inventive Machines." Landslide, 10 (1), 16-22 (2017)
• “Big Data and Its Use by Artificial Intelligence.” In Big Data Is Not a Monolith, MIT Press (Hamid Ekbia, et al., eds.) (2016)
• "Evidence and Extrapolation: Mechanisms for Regulating Off-Label Uses of Drugs and Devices," 64 Duke L.J. 377 (2014).
• Republished in part: "Can Bayesian Extrapolation Improve FDA Regulation of Off-Label Uses of Drugs and Devices?" FDLI's Food and Drug Policy Forum, 4(5), 1-12 (2014)
• "Documenting Traditional Medical Knowledge," World Intellectual Property Organization (2014)
• "FDA Involvement in Off-Label Use: Debate Between Richard Epstein and Ryan Abbott," 44 Sw. L. Rev. 1 (2014)
• "Redefining Medical Necessity: A Consumer-Driven Solution to the U.S. Health Care Crisis," 47 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 943 (2014)
• "Balancing Access and Innovation in India's Shifting IP Regime, Remarks (2014)" 35 Whittier Law Review 341 (2014)
• "Big Data and Pharmacovigilance: Using Healthcare Information Exchanges to Revolutionize Drug Safety," 99 Iowa L. Rev. 225 (2013)
• Republished in part: "Post-Market Drug Regulation in the Age of Big Data: What Path to the Promised Land?" FDLI's Food and Drug Policy Forum, 4 (10), 1-14, (2014)
• "Medico-Legal Issues in Cardiology," Cardiol Rev. 2013 Sep-Oct; 21(5):222-8.

Background and Education

• Ph.D., University of Surrey School of Law, 2020 
• Solicitor Advocate, England and Wales, 2017–present
• Attorney, California and New York (licensed), 2012–present    
• Patent Attorney, United States Patent and Trademark Office, 2011–present
• Partner; Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan, LLP; 2016–present
• General Counsel and Medical Director, Abcentra, LLC, 2014–2021
• Of Counsel, One LLP, 2013–2016
• Associate Professor, Southwestern Law School, 2012–2016
• Intern Physician, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, 2011–2012
• M.D., University of California, San Diego, 2011
• J.D., Yale Law School, 2011
• Consultant, World Intellectual Property Organization, 2009–2012
• Consultant, Medicines Transparency Alliance, 2010
• Consultant, World Health Organization, 2008–2010
• Consultant, UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, 2006–2010
• Consultant, Health Research for Action, 2009
• Summer Associate, Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, 2009
• Summer Intern, World Health Organization, 2008
• M.T.O.M., Emperor’s College, 2005
• B.S., University of California, Los Angeles, 2005
• Foreign Language Immersion Program (Mandarin Chinese), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Summer 2002