William E. Kovacic to address IIT Chicago-Kent Global Competition Law Conference

William E. Kovacic, former chairman and a current commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), will deliver the keynote address at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law's Global Competition Law conference on Friday, October 28. The one-day conference will be held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at IIT Chicago-Kent, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago.

William Kovacic has served as an FTC commissioner since January 2006, following his nomination by President George W. Bush to a seven-year term and confirmation by the U.S. Senate. In March 2008, President Bush named him FTC chairman. He served as chairman until March 2009. Kovacic has also served, since January 2009, as vice chair for outreach of the International Competition Network.

An expert in both antitrust law and government contracts law, Kovacic has published extensively in both fields. Prior to his current position with the FTC, Kovacic spent eight years as the E.K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law at George Washington University Law School. From 1986 to 1999, he was the George Mason University Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law, where he taught antitrust law, contracts, government contracts, and a seminar in comparative government procurement law.

Chicago-Kent's Global Competition Law conference will bring together international scholars and practitioners from China, France, Germany, Israel, Korea and the United States. Other speakers include IIT Chicago-Kent distinguished professor David J. Gerber; Mor Bakhoum of the Max Planck Institute; Professor Seung Wha Chang of Seoul National University Law School; IIT Chicago-Kent Professor Sungjoon Cho; Andre Fiebig of Baker & McKenzie; Eleanor Fox, the Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Trade Regulation at New York University Law School; and Michal Gal, director of the Law and MBA program and co-director of the Forum on Law and Markets at the Faculty of Law, Haifa University.

Additional speakers include Professor Andrew T. Guzman of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law; Professor Laurence Idot of the University Panthéon-Assas (Paris); Professor Daniel Sokol of the University of Florida Levin College of Law; Professor Spencer Weber Waller, director of the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola University-Chicago School of Law; Wang Xiaoye of the Chinese Academy of Social Science; and Professor Wentong Zheng of the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. Chicago-Kent offers J.D. and LL.M. programs in International and Comparative Law.