Susan Wilson, U.S. IP Attaché, European Union, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and United Kingdom
Susan Wilson currently serves as the first U.S. intellectual property attaché to the European Union (EU). Her responsibilities include monitoring intellectual property-related developments in institutions and in its member states. She also contributes to bilateral IP-related dialogues with Switzerland and Turkey, advances U.S. IP policy objectives at the OECD, and supports fellow Geneva-based U.S. IP attachés in their work with the WTO and various U.N. institutions.
Prior to being sworn in as attaché, Ms. Wilson was a director for intellectual property and innovation at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where she coordinated the annual Special 301 Review of trading partners’ IPR policies and practices and the development of the annual Notorious Markets List of physical and online marketplaces that facilitate trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy worldwide. Prior to joining USTR, Ms. Wilson served as director of the Office of Intellectual Property Rights in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. While at Commerce, Ms. Wilson was the U.S. co-chair of the Transatlantic IPR Working Group and one of the Department’s inaugural detailees to the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center at USTR.
Ms. Wilson has also served in several other federal agencies, including as: deputy director of the Office of International Intellectual Property Enforcement at the U.S. Department of State; an attorney specializing in domestic and international intellectual property enforcement issues in the Office of Legislative and International Affairs at the USPTO; a trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, Criminal Division, at the U.S. Department of Justice; and an attorney in the Intellectual Property Rights Branch at the U.S. Customs Service. In early 2001, she left the government to join the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) as senior policy counsel, and returned to public service in 2002.