September 23, 2002, Alexandria, VA - The Licensing Executives Society U.S.A. and Canada (LES) will present its Licensing Achievement Award to IBM Corporation as part of the 2002 LES (USA) Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. The award will be presented during the luncheon program, Monday, September 23, 2002, to be held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers. This is the third award presented since 1999 in recognition of a company that has contributed to the progress of licensing as a business activity, has had long term success in licensing with innovative licensing programs and has provided a significant contribution to the technology transfer community.

Prior recipients of the award have been Stanford University and Pfizer Incorporated. As the pre-eminent society in technology transfer, LES (USA) Canada is very pleased to present the award to IBM. They have demonstrated an outstanding contribution to licensing and technology transfer activity, the details of which will be expanded upon at the luncheon presentation.

Gerald Rosenthal, Vice-President of IBM Corporation will receive the award on behalf of IBM. He will be accompanied by Mr. Woody Ritchey, CEO of Delphion Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM.

Immediately preceding the award presentation, William Polese, Program Manager of Lifesciences Venture Capital and Strategies of IBM will be presenting on the subject of "The Role of Intellectual Property in Licensing in Bioinformatics". For those attending the meeting, the Monday sessions promise to be most interesting.

The Licensing Executives Society (U.S.A. and Canada), Inc. is a professional society comprised of more than 5,000 members involved in the transfer, use, development, manufacture and marketing of intellectual property. LES members include professionals in the field of law, business, academics, science and government. LES (U.S.A. and Canada), Inc. is a member society of the Licensing Executives Society International, Inc. (LESI), which has a worldwide membership of close to 10,000 members in 27 national societies, representing over 80 countries.