Since becoming general counsel in 2002, Smith has overseen numerous negotiations which have led to competition law and intellectual property agreements with governments and with companies across the IT sector. He has helped spearhead the growth in the company's intellectual property portfolio and the launch of global campaigns to bring enforcement actions against those engaged in software piracy and counterfeiting, malware, consumer fraud, and other digital crimes. As software has migrated online and into a computing "cloud," (collecting and storing data using remote computer servers) one of LCA's current principal goals is to help establish the legal foundation for this next generation of technology.
Smith has played a central role in ensuring that Microsoft fulfills its corporate responsibilities. In recent years Microsoft has consistently ranked in the top 2 percent of the S&P 500 for corporate governance scores. During Smith's tenure, the company's citizenship programs have reached 280 million people in 110 countries through technology training programs that help individuals develop the skills needed to obtain jobs. Smith has also helped advance several significant diversity and pro bono initiatives, both within Microsoft and in the broader legal profession.
Before joining Microsoft in 1993, Smith was a partner at Covington & Burling. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and received his law degree at the Columbia University School of Law.
Smith has written numerous articles regarding international intellectual property and electronic commerce issues, and has served as a lecturer at The Hague Academy of International Law.
Smith currently serves as chair of the Washington Roundtable, a leading Washington state-based business organization. He also chairs the Advocacy Committee of the Association of Corporate Counsel, co-chairs the Board of Directors of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), and serves on the board executive committees of the Business Software Alliance, the Seattle Foundation, and the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity.
According to the September 23rd article at Bloomberg.com, Microsoft Corp. is urging an overhaul of U.S. laws for electronic privacy to help new services such as cloud computing, a technology that may double sales in five years.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington earlier this week, Smith explained that as more data are stored on remote servers and away from personal computers, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed by Congress in 1986 in an effort to give law enforcement agencies access to information while preserving an individual's right to privacy, needs to be updated to give consumers confidence their information is protected.
''The law needs to catch up,'' Smith said after the hearing. Cloud computing is ''a critical part of the future and quite central to all that we're doing.''
''We recognize that enterprises and individual consumers will only use new technologies if they have confidence that their information will be reasonably protected,'' Smith said in his testimony.
Cloud computing may generate global sales of $148.8 billion by the end of 2014, up from $58.6 billion last year, according to researcher Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. If consumers worry about online security, it could limit the industry's growth, Smith said in prepared testimony.
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