Robert Greene Sterne is a founding director of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox, an intellectual property specialty law firm located in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Sterne is one of the leading patent attorneys in the new AIA contested proceedings and legacy patent reexamination in the United States. He was involved with the U.S. Senate staff in the architecture and drafting of the AIA contested proceedings at the USPTO. He is involved in more of the new contested proceedings and legacy reexaminations than practically any other attorney. Mr. Sterne is the Editor-in-Chief of Patent Office Litigation, a two-volume set focused on the new contested proceedings under the America Invents Act, published in 2012 by Thomson Reuters Westlaw. This book, the very first on the new U.S. contested proceedings, examines how the proceedings interact with other aspects of patent procurement and enforcement, and delivers practical analysis and advice. Mr. Sterne is the author of the most prominent article on patent reexamination, published in Volume 11 of The Sedona Conference Journal, as well as many other articles on the topic. He has been the lead attorney for some of the most significant reexaminations, including i4i, Uniloc, Apple, Rambus, Martek, Volterra, Sybase, Fractus, Extreme Networks, TransData, Spectrum and others. He is a frequent speaker on the new contested proceedings and legacy reexaminations at recognized venues, including Sedona, ACPC, PLI, FCBA, FBA, IPO, AOAIPI, The Advance Patent Law Institute, and many law schools.
Mr. Sterne is also recognized as a thought leader on the law of obviousness, corporate intellectual property best practices including the Chief Intellectual Property Officer (CIPO), and Board of Director responsibility for IP. He specializes in the area of intellectual property for cutting edge technologies in the electronics and computer arenas, the monetization of patents, patent litigation and patent licensing. Mr. Sterne is well known for his work across a number of technology spaces including software, bioinformatics, wireless, and business method patents.
Mr. Sterne is internationally recognized as an expert on software and business method patents, having been the lead attorney for IBM in the Federal Circuit test case, In re Beauregard (1995), that led to the USPTO Software Patent Guidelines. He served as the lead patent lawyer for Teleflex at the U.S. Supreme Court in KSR v. Teleflex (2007) that lead to the current legal test for patent obviousness. He was i4i's successful reexamination counsel at the U.S. Supreme Court in Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership et al., and was Uniloc's successful reexamination counsel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Uniloc v. Microsoft (2011). He has been amicus counsel in significant patent cases at the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit and frequently appears before the PTAB and the Federal Circuit.
In 2012, Mr. Sterne received the Sedona Lifetime Achievement Award and Attorney of the Year "Good Scout" Award. He is an electrical engineer by training, holding BSEE and MS degrees from Tufts University, as well as a JD from the University of Maryland Law School. He has completed advanced legal training from the George Washington National Law Center, is a registered U.S. patent attorney (#28,912), and is a member of the bar of Maryland and the District of Columbia.