Neil A. Smith

Neil A. Smith was a partner for almost four decades in several well-respected law firms in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, including Limbach & Limbach. Mr. Smith was appointed as the first Administrative Patent Judge for the Patent Trial & Appeal Board in the new US Patent & Trademark Office satellite office in Silicon Valley. The PTAB rules on patent appeals within the Patent Office, interferences, reexaminations, and now the post-grant reviews and business method patent challenges and derivation proceedings available under the America Invents Act. He recently resigned, enabling him to pursue alternative dispute resolution of patent and intellectual property cases.

Before moving to San Francisco, Mr. Smith began his career in intellectual property as a Patent Attorney for the US Atomic Energy Commission at its headquarters in Washington, DC, and thereafter served as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Giles S. Rich, Judge on the Court of Customs & Patent Appeals, the predecessor to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Smith has substantial experience in the practice of patent and intellectual property litigation in the federal courts. He is a frequent speaker and author on intellectual property and ADR subjects, including a quarterly column in the California State Bar IP section magazine, New Matter, on Ninth Circuit cases, and “Complex Patent Suits: The Use of Special Masters for Claim Construction” 2, Landslide 1, Oct. 2009 (American Bar Association), and Chapter “New Strategies for Infringement Litigation” Recent Trends in Patent Infringement Lawsuits (Aspotore/Thomson, 2010).