David Bryant Walker

Mr. Walker represents high-technology clients in independent patent evaluation for patent pools and strategic management of intellectual property portfolios, including prosecution, litigation, transactions, and counseling involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, domain names, and trade secrets.

Practice Areas

Mr. Walker is a seasoned independent patent evaluator for patent pools with extensive experience as a worldwide independent patent evaluator for a leading HEVC (H.265) patent pool from patent pool development through pool growth to over 15,000 patents as well as audio and wi-fi pools. He establishes and executes processes for patent submission and timely, efficient, cost-effective delivery of legally defensible essentiality determinations that efficiently scale as your patent pool grows.

He specializes in assessing intellectual property portfolios, analyzing the strength of competitors’ portfolios, evaluating title to intellectual property assets, negotiating licenses, and conducting infringement and invalidity studies.

Mr. Walker represents clients in patent, copyright, trademark, domain name, and trade secret disputes and appeals before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

He prepares and prosecutes patent applications in aerospace and defense, satellite design and operations, nuclear engineering, communication networks, signal processing, mechanical, electrical, electronic, medical device, Internet, cyber operations and security, software, and business methods technologies.

Representative Legal Experience

As Administrative Patent Judge on the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, he has authored more than 100 opinions and decided over 400 ex parte appeals addressing the full range of patentability issues in business methods, software, aerospace, mechanical, electro-mechanical, nuclear, and medical device technologies.

As Chief Patent Counsel for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, he managed the intellectual property portfolio for NASA’s premier earth and space science center, a major hub for earth-space communications.

He supervised a multi-law firm team in the defense of a trade secret misappropriation claim involving launch vehicle technology with a multi-billion-dollar demand for damages. He was a member of the litigation team that successfully enforced NTP’s wireless email patents against Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry devices.

Technical Experience

• Operational experience in cyber warfare and nuclear submarines

• Master Instructor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, U.S. Naval Academy

Law Journals

• Managing Editor, The Stanford Technology Law Review

Clerkships