Elliot Furman - Principal
Elliot Furman is licensed to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office and has worked on a wide range of domestic and international patents for individual inventors, start-ups, large companies, and venture capital firms. His expertise in patent law is complemented by more than fifteen years of combined business and engineering experience, and a Master's Degree in Engineering from Stanford University.
Elliot provides a unique range of services including patent preparation and prosecution, product analysis and patentability assessments, guidance in defending against infringement accusations, advice on designing around competitors' patents and products, product design and prototyping guidance, and patent training. He also routinely participates in engineering design meetings and business strategy meetings with an eye towards developing valuable patent portfolios that maximize opportunities for successful enforcement, defense, licensing, acquisition, and marketing.
Elliot's breadth of experience has benefited companies of all sizes. A few examples include:
* Established and managed an in-house patent law practice for a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with $70 million in investments.
* Filed, procured, and managed numerous patents for startups in the telecom, communications, and computer industries. Current clients include early stage startups operating in the latest industries such as online applications.
* Successfully designed around a patent whose owner repeatedly offered a license to an industry leading company with over $100 million in annual sales. The company wanted to expand their product line but felt that the patent owner's offer was unreasonable.
* Advised an industry-leading company on a potential infringement case, developing a strategy to avoid litigation and royalty payments while coming to market with a decidedly non-infringing replacement product.
Elliot draws upon his wide-ranging technical knowledge and experience to serve clients in a variety of established and emerging fields. Some of his areas of expertise include: business methods; electronics; telecommunications; analog and digital integrated circuits (ICs); semiconductors and semiconductor devices; Internet applications, services, software, and hardware; online advertising, news aggregation, and publishing; blogs; Web 2.0; financial systems and methods; databases; mobile communication devices; wireless and optical communications; GPS and navigation systems; manufacturing processes; digital and analog signal processing; video; audio; medical devices; mechanical devices; games, toys, and novelty items.
Elliot has a Masters of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is registered to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office in patent cases.