This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, IPWatchdog President Renée C. Quinn spoke with Coke Morgan Stewart. Formerly Acting Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Stewart is now president and CEO of the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP). Their conversation, recorded at IPWatchdog’s 2026 Women’s IP Forum, examines what she learned while leading the agency, why she believes the patent system needs legislative reform, and how her experience has shaped her approach to leadership and advocacy.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Fran Cruz and Marlene Valderrama. Recorded before a live audience following IPWatchdog’s Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explored how professionals build relationships that lead to business, career opportunities, and better ways of doing their jobs. Drawing on their perspectives at Juristat and Halliburton, respectively, Fran and Marlene returned to a fundamental point: earning someone’s attention begins with understanding what matters to them. That requires asking questions and actually listening.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Steve Caltrider, Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a former General Patent Counsel at Eli Lilly. The discussion also examined patent quality and the role of examination. Caltrider’s view is that the best time to establish confidence in a patent is when the USPTO examines it—not years later through PTAB review or district court litigation, after investment decisions have already been made. He recognized the need for an error-correction mechanism, while cautioning that review should not become so extensive or unpredictable that it undermines the value of issued patents.