THOMAS A. RUNK received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Lowell Technological Institute in 1970 and his J.D. from Western State University in 1981. He is involved in all aspects of the firm's intellectual property practice and specializes in patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and licensing. He has extensive experience in obtaining patents in the fields of electrical, mechanical, signal processing, control systems, data management and processing systems, computer hardware, and software technologies worldwide. He also has extensive experience in the copyright protection of software worldwide and in software licensing agreements. 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 of product lines and of entire companies. He also provides client counseling services regarding the analysis of the patent and trademark rights of others when developing new products and bringing those products to market.

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 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is a member of the State Bar of California, the American Bar Association, Los Angeles County Bar Association, and Los Angeles Patent Law Association.