Practitioner in Residence

Email: joe.keeley@michaelbeststrategies.com

Joe Keeley is a Practitioner in Residence at C-IP². Joe is the only person to have served as the Chief Intellectual Property Counsel of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and is currently with the law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich LLP where he works with their IP and federal strategies teams.

In his previous role as General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe coordinated multiple judicial priorities of Congress and the White House including moving federal judicial nominees including those to the U.S. Supreme Court through the Committee. His legislative responsibilities included all civil matters including copyright, trademark, and patent legislation, privacy, antitrust, arbitration, litigation funding, and artificial intelligence. Joe negotiated, drafted, and guided to enactment the 2020 intellectual property legislative package that created the Copyright Claims Board while also enacting a felony streaming provision. Previously, Joe guided to enactment the end of the Section 119 compulsory satellite license.

Earlier, Joe served as Chief Courts & Intellectual Property Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, during which time he focused on patent reform, an extensive 20-hearing copyright law review, and enactment of both the Music Modernization Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act. The Music Modernization Act has already paid out over $1 billion in royalties to songwriters worldwide via the newly created Mechanical Licensing Collective of Nashville.