Overview

Cliff Maier is a partner in the Palo Alto office of Mayer Brown’s Intellectual Property practice. Cliff, a registered patent attorney with a PhD in electrical engineering, focuses primarily on disputes relating to patents and other intellectual property, often involving electronics, computer, software, and business method technologies. Cliff’s experience includes litigation in federal courts, arbitrations, inter partes reexamination and other Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings, and International Trade Commission investigations.

Cliff’s practice includes patent litigations involving semiconductors, cryptography, biometrics, wireless communications, consumer electronics, human-machine interaction, and networking, as well as business method patents involving financial services technology and banking. He also has experience rendering intellectual property opinions, including with respect to freedom-to-operate, infringement, and invalidity, and he counsels start-up companies on building intellectual property portfolios and on defensive measures to help avoid unwanted litigations. In addition to patents, Cliff’s practice includes other intellectual property disputes, as well as other disputes and transactions where technology is an issue.

After obtaining his PhD in electrical engineering with a concentration in semiconductor physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and prior to joining Mayer Brown, Cliff spent a decade designing some of the world’s fastest microprocessors, working as an engineer and technical manager for two large microprocessor design firms and a Silicon Valley start-up. As an engineer, Cliff worked in nearly every microprocessor engineering role, including circuit and physical design, logic design, microarchitecture, physical and logical verification and analysis, testing, electronic packaging, and instruction set architecture. His microprocessor design experience encompasses silicon, III-V materials, and both bipolar and CMOS logic and circuit design. He also has extensive experience creating Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, including managing the team responsible for EDA at a major microprocessor design company. In addition to hardware design, Cliff has decades of experience in software engineering, including current technologies such as smartphone app coding, server-side databases, and over a dozen programming languages. Cliff has authored and co-authored numerous papers in the field of microprocessor design that were published in the Journal of Solid State Circuits and other IEEE publications.

Areas of Focus

Practices

Spoken Languages

  • English

Experience

Electrical and Semiconductor

  • Represented an electronics company in a multi-district litigation against an assertion by Plaintiff of MRI patent: favorable settlement.
  • Represented a solar company in Northern District of California against an assertion by Plaintiff of solar interconnection patent: favorable settlement.
  • Represented an electronics company in Delaware District Court against an assertion by Plaintiff of a light emitting diode patent: currently pending.
  • Represented a green technology engineering company in Central District of California in a declaratory judgment action against owner of exhaust capturing system patent: invalidated patent after bench trial.
  • Represented an electronics company in Eastern District of Texas against an assertion by Plaintiff of a digital watermarking patent: favorable settlement.
  • Represented a semiconductor company in Delaware District Court against an assertion by Plaintiff of a power management patent: final judgment of non-infringement on claim construction; on appeal.
  • Represented an automotive restraint company in Middle District of Alabama against an assertion by Plaintiff of airbag patents: currently pending.
  • Represented an electronics company in Northern District of Alabama against an assertion by Plaintiff of a light emitting diode patent: currently pending.
  • Represented an electronics company in Northern District of Georgia against assertions by Plaintiff of automated check cashing machine patents: final judgment of non-infringement and invalidity.
  • Represented an electronics company in an international arbitration relating to a dispute as to a cross-licensing agreement: currently pending.
  • Led the team representing a financial services technology company in a declaratory judgment action in the Eastern District of Virginia involving cross-assertion of business method patents: favorable settlement.

Copyright

  • Represented a shoe manufacturer and retailers in Central District of California against assertions by Plaintiff of infringement of a copyright on a fabric pattern: favorable settlement.

News

Education

Santa Clara University Law School, JD, summa cum laude

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, PhD

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MS

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, BS, cum laude

Admissions

  • California

Court

  • US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
  • US District Court for the Central District of California
  • US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas
  • US District Court for the Southern District of California
  • US District Court for the Northern District of California
  • US Patent and Trademark Office