Chris's practice includes patent preparation and prosecution, intellectual property licensing and litigation, patent analysis, opinions, and strategy (offensive and defensive).

Practice Areas & Background

Chris partners with clients to build business-focused patent portfolios. To each client engagement, he brings a business savvy and legal acumen refined over more than 25 years of law firm and corporate environments. His clients range from multinational Fortune 50 corporations to midsize and startup companies. He provides creative and strategic solutions for protecting and licensing intellectual property.

Chris performs non-infringement and invalidity opinions, licensing, and patent preparation and prosecution, both domestic and international. Chris assists clients with IP portfolio analysis, trademark prosecution, mediation of intellectual property disputes, right-to-use opinions, patent invalidity opinions, non-infringement opinions, technology transfer and licensing counseling, and due diligence for divestitures and acquisitions. Chris prepares patents for a wide variety of technologies, with a particular emphasis in data center processors, cloud-based software, artificial intelligence, wireless communications, data security, and digital and analog circuit design.

Chris has assisted clients in defense actions and represented companies before the International Trade Commission and district courts throughout the United States. He has significant appellate experience and has advocated for clients before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Before joining the firm, Chris worked in-house for a corporate intellectual property legal department and as a shareholder and group leader of the patent practice team of an AM LAW 50 law firm in Chicago. Prior to attending law school, he worked as an electrical engineer, designing digital control systems and developing associated software.