FinTech Law & Regulation: Exploring the Potential for Blockchain to Remake Business

Nancy Liao is an Associate Research Scholar in Law and the John R. Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell Executive Director, Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. Prior to becoming Executive Director in 2016, she worked on formulating policy and providing legal advice on both prudential and derivatives regulation. Liao was most recently Assistant General Counsel at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. ("ISDA"), where she crafted and executed cross-jurisdictional advocacy strategies pertaining to derivatives clearing.

Before ISDA, she practiced in the public and nonprofit sectors, first at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (where she led Dodd-Frank rulemaking teams and served as Special Counsel and Policy Advisor to a Commissioner) and then at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (where she was counsel and served as Secretary of the Financial Markets Lawyers Group, a group of leading in-house practitioners supporting activity in foreign exchange and other financial markets).

Liao graduated from Yale Law School and Harvard University, where she majored in government. She began her legal career as an Associate at Latham & Watkins LLP.

Ryan Straus focuses his practice on providing strategic advice to companies on legal, policy and business issues relating to financial technology. Ryan has significant experience advising financial technology clients on a broad spectrum of regulatory issues and has long-standing relationships with state and federal financial regulators. As an attorney with a background in both technology and financial services, Ryan assists clients with payment and lending matters, including electronic payments, mobile payments, prepaid cards, virtual and digital currencies, consumer lending, and federal and state licensing. Ryan also assists banks with operational compliance issues, new product development, and regulatory matters.

Ryan is a recognized expert on non-bank providers of financial products and services and frequently counsels participants from both the public and private sectors regarding innovations in consumer finance. In addition to his law practice, Ryan is Adjunct Professor at Seattle University School of Law and co-developed the Digital Commerce and Financial Technology curriculum for Seattle University’s new LLM in Innovation and Technology Law. Ryan is the author of Bloomberg BNA’s Emerging Payments portfolio, part of Bloomberg BNA’s Banking Practice Series, and co-author of the United States chapter of “The Law of Bitcoin?.” Ryan is a frequent speaker on a wide range of consumer finance topics, including issues related to new product development, operational compliance, and Bitcoin and the Blockchain, and has been interviewed by, and written for, many national publications, including Forbes, Time, American Banker, Bloomberg Brief: Financial Regulation, Communications of the ACM, the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists, and The Hill.

Pallab Chakraborty is the Legal Director at AMD. He ia an attorney and technologist focusing on privacy and cybersecurity counseling. Thought leader and frequent speaker on technology trends and their impact on enterprise legal functions. Member of California bar and USPTO registered patent attorney.

For more than 20 years, Ted Mlynar has been developing and implementing innovative solutions to some of the most difficult intellectual property problems in the world. Combining a keen legal acumen, first-chair trial experience, and a deep understanding of technology, Ted works closely with clients to resolve disputes outside the courtroom, where possible, and inside, when necessary.

Whether it is industry behemoths engaged in patent world war, patent trolls threatening expensive lawsuits, David fending off Goliath, or competitors engaged in an all-out struggle for survival, Ted brings to bear a wealth of practical experience of intellectual property law — including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and unfair competition.

Ted prepares and advises in the negotiation of intellectual property licenses with a particular focus in areas of high technology, including electronics, wireless communications, semiconductors, software, and e-commerce. He majored in electrical engineering at Caltech and is a registered patent attorney.

Ted has co-authored and has been quoted in numerous articles relating to blockchain and smart contract technologies. He has been acknowledged by the Chamber of Digital Commerce as a subject matter expert in the field of smart contracts. Ted leads the Hogan Lovells Blockchain-Smart Contracts IPMT Working Group.