THOMAS A. RUNK received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Lowell Technological Institute and his J.D. from Western State University. He is involved in all aspects of the firm's intellectual property practice and specializes in patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, contracts, and licensing. He has extensive experience in obtaining patents in the fields of electrical, mechanical, signal processing, control systems, information management and processing systems, computer hardware, and software technologies worldwide. He also has extensive experience in contracts pertaining to intellectual property rights, and in software, patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret licensing agreements and confidentiality agreements worldwide. He also is experienced in the copyright and patent protection of software worldwide. In recent years, he has worked extensively with medical instruments, devices, and systems. In addition to having broad experience in patent, trademark, and copyright licensing matters, he also has extensive experience in the intellectual property aspects pertaining to acquisitions and divestitures of product lines and of entire companies. He also provides client counseling services regarding the analysis of the patent, trademark, and copyright rights of others when developing new products and bringing those products to market.
Mr. Runk has also been actively engaged in intellectual property litigation including all aspects of pre-trial work as well as trial to a jury.
Mr. Runk joined the firm in 1989 and became a partner in 1995. Before that time, he was Associate Patent Counsel for the Ground Systems Group of Hughes Aircraft Company and was responsible for the protection of its radar technologies, spread spectrum communications technologies, display consoles, sonar and radar processor technologies, software products, and its computer products.
He is admitted to practice in California; the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; the U.S. District Courts in the Central, Northern, and Southern Districts of California; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; the U.S. Supreme Court, and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is a member of the State Bar of California, the American Bar Association, the Long Beach Bar Association, the Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association, and the Los Angeles Intellectual Property American Inn of Court.
Mr. Runk is a speaker with the Continuing Education of the Bar (CEB) on Trade Secret Law and is a contributing author to the CEB publication, "Trade Secret Practice in California."
