Eric Gill is special counsel in the Intellectual Property Practice Group in the firm's San Diego (Del Mar) office.
Spanning more than a dozen years, Eric's IP practice draws heavily on his industry experience and education in electrical engineering and encompasses litigation and strategic portfolio development and counseling.
Eric's litigation practice focuses on high technology, including among other things wireless and cellular communications, smartphones, automotive, Internet-of-Things, semiconductors, video coding and social media mobile applications and backend systems. Since 2014, he has been litigating and advising clients on Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and related Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing issues, including many patents and portfolios covering a broad spectrum of technologies in the 3GPP/ETSI cellular standards and patents directed to the H.264 and H.265 video coding standards.
Eric is a registered patent attorney and has substantial experience developing valuable portfolios, including drafting and successfully prosecuting patent applications covering many different technologies. His litigation expertise informs and enhances his approach to this work. He also advises clients on matters involving trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights and unfair competition.
Before joining the firm, Eric analyzed patent portfolios of competitors and acquisition targets while working in the IP strategy group of one of the world's leading semiconductor and wireless technology companies. Before entering the legal sector, he worked as a microwave and radio frequency design engineer at Northrop Grumman, where he designed integrated circuits and systems for aircraft and satellite communications and for counter-improvised-explosive-device-warfare technologies. He also worked as an RF chip designer at NextWave Wireless, a San Diego startup that developed chipsets and wireless technology for WiMAX and 4G LTE.