For more than a century, the New York Intellectual Property Law Association has hosted an annual dinner in honor of the federal judiciary.

And though many legal groups have dinners where judges and lawyers can mingle, we’ve been hard pressed to find any that are as lavish as NYIPA’s and where the intermingling is as blatant — i.e., NYILPA puts out a book for each dinner boasting about who gets to sit with which judge and charges law firms some $10,000 to sponsor the tables where judges are seated.

So we have some questions about this.

Our letter, sent on Oct. 6, is below. We’ll update this post if and when we receive a response.

Dear Mr. Bondor,

This is Gabe Roth and Emma Donahue from Fix the Court, a national nonprofit that advocates for greater accountability in the federal judiciary. We write to address our concerns about the propriety of the New York Intellectual Property Law Association’s annual dinner in honor of the federal judiciary, which is approaching its 105th anniversary.

In our view, it’s ethically questionable for judges to attend such a costly event for free, especially when attorneys and organizations with cases before these judges are present as NYIPLA members, paid guests and/or event sponsors.

To offer just two examples from the March 2026 dinner, and there are several, D. Del. Judge Richard Andrews was seated at the same table as Google senior counsel Greg Wallace while Andrews was presiding over a patent infringement case where Google was (and is, since the case is ongoing) the defendant. And D. Del. Mag. Judge Sherry Fallon was seated at a table with attorney Anne Gaza, who was litigating two cases before her.

Equally concerning are the table fees. NYIPLA’s website says that government and academic non-NYILPA members can pay a reduced fee of $275 to attend the dinner, with members’ registration costing $375 and non-members’ registration costing $675. But table registrations that include a spot for “Honored Guest[s]” — which, according to the 2026 Dinner Book, includes current and former judges, along with other government officials and organizational representatives — start at $9,400 ($1,175/person), with the platinum option going for $10,400 ($1,300/person).

That companies can pay five figures to spend time with a judge who may be presiding over that company’s cases is a system ripe for corruption. Maybe we’re wrong and NYILPA is working with each judge’s chambers to ensure that such conflicts are rare or nonexistent. But we doubt it.

As such, we would like to know:
1. Did NYIPLA receive a waiver from the Judicial Conference and/or its Code of Conduct Committee to host judges for free at such a costly event where attorneys and litigants who practice before them are present?
2. Do you agree there is an ethical issue or at least an appearance-of-impropriety problem here, and if so, what are you doing to mitigate it?
3. Is this dinner a fundraiser for NYILPA?

Thank you in advance for your response.

Sincerely,
Gabe Roth
Executive Director
Fix the Court

Emma Donahue
Law Clerk
Fix the Court

P.S. It’s worth pointing out that dozens of the judges attending the NYIPLA gala are, in our view, erroneously listing their dinner ticket as a “reimbursement” and not a “gift” on their financial disclosures. In fact, only two of the 39 who included the dinner over the past three years called it a gift: E.D. Pa. Judge Kelley Hodge went in 2025 and valued her tickets (presumably one each for her and her husband) at $1,200, and D. N.J. Mag. Judge Rukhsanah Singh valued her tickets for the 2023 and 2024 dinners at $500 apiece.