Robert Lerner and Mark Hildebrand were named National Champions at the National IP LawMeet on Nov. 4.

Hildebrand and Lerner were among six teams that took part in the national competition after winning regional contests that were held in October.

The competition required students to draft and negotiate software development, license and hosting agreement between an education technology company and a company that provides training solutions for home health aides.  The tech company offers a cloud-based software for delivering video-based role-play exercises.  The training company wants to integrate this “software as a service” into its learning management system as part of a larger online training product it is developing for the market.

The students were evaluated based on their effectiveness advocating for the party they represented and producing a successful transaction.

The meet was hosted by Steve Rocci, senior partner at BakerHostetler, where four transitional attorneys, acting as judges, negotiated with the students via video conferencing.  The judges were:

• Kacey Cahill, executive director of strategic software procurement at Comcast

• Alex Lempiner, corporate counsel and secretary at Rembrandt IP Management LLC

• Fred Wilf, managing partner at Wilftek

• Professor Karl Okamoto, director of the Business and Entrepreneurial Law program and creator of LawMeets.

"Mark and Rob were very much just like some of the best lawyers I encounter every day,” Cahill said.  “They knew the issues and how get a deal done.  I was very impressed."

The team was advised by Ronald Karam, a partner at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, where he co-chairs the Intellectual Property Practice Group.