Announcing the 2026 Vanguard Award and Larry Maxham Award Recipients

Jacqueline Charlesworth, a partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, is a litigator and transactional attorney whose practice is focused on copyright and music.  Her roster of clients includes media entities, music companies, individual songwriters and artists, software companies and trade associations.  

 Previously, Jacqueline served as General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights of the U.S. Copyright Office, where she was responsible for interpreting the U.S. Copyright Act and oversaw a wide range of litigation and policy matters, including the Office’s participation in Supreme Court cases.  After returning to private practice, Jacqueline helped craft and secure passage of the Music Modernization Act, landmark legislation to update U.S. music licensing rules. She has lectured extensively on copyright and music law, including at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and other law schools, and serves as a trustee and officer of the Los Angeles Copyright Society.

 Jacqueline received a B.A. with honors in American Civilization from Brown University, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.  At Yale, she oversaw The Yale Law Journal as an Executive Committee Editor and was a founding member of the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism.  Following law school, she clerked for Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of the Southern District of New York and Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit.

Jeffrey A. Lefstin is Professor of Law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.  He received his Sc.B. in Biology from Brown University; his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco; and his J.D. from Stanford University. At UC Law, Professor Lefstin teaches contracts, intellectual property, and international intellectual property. He also co-directs the UC Law SF – Bucerius Law School program in transnational intellectual property transactions in Hamburg, Germany. His current research focuses on the historical development of patent law and its institutions, especially patent-eligible subject matter, and on the role of the patent system in biomedical innovation. His writings have been cited in opinions of the district courts, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

Professor Lefstin joined the UC Law SF faculty after serving as a law clerk to Judge Raymond C. Clevenger, III, at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He also practiced patent and antitrust law with the biotechnology and litigation groups at Townsend, Townsend & Crew in San Francisco. Prior to his legal career, he was a molecular biologist, studying mammalian gene regulatory mechanisms and DNA-protein interactions. His scientific papers appeared in Nature, Genes & Development, and the Journal of Molecular Biology.

Neil Smith practiced intellectual property law in San Francisco for  50 years, after clerking for Judge Giles Rich, on the predecessor to the Federal Circuit. First with Limbach & Limbach, an IP boutique, and then with other CA firms, until he was appointed as the first Judge for the USPTO Patent Trial & Appeal Board in Silicon Valley. After that, he has been doing principally IP, mediation and arbitration, and counseling. while continuing his extensive volunteer service, leadership, and education of IP lawyers. Neil is Of Counsel to IP firm, KB-ASH. 

Neil has great dedication to the State Bar/CLA.  Neil was on the IP Executive Committee, and also on ExComs of International Law, and CLA’s ADR Committee, where he served as Chair, Neil was presented the “Distinguished Service Award,” by the CLA Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution. He is on the ADR panels of AAA and FedArb, NDCA, the Federal Circuit, and FedArb, and was just appointed to the Panel of Mediators, Arbitrators and Experts for the Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre of the Unified Patent Court.