175 F.3d 1356 (Fed. Cir. 1999) (en banc)
Patent counsel for the people who build the machines.
Lincoln County, SD - 1971 to present
Tom grew up on a working farm in Springdale Township, Lincoln County, South Dakota. The first thing farm machinery teaches is that agriculture becomes engineering at the moment weather meets a row unit, a broken part, and a deadline.
Pitt-Des Moines - 1989 to 1993
Before law school, Tom studied agricultural engineering at SDSU and worked in structural steel fabrication. Tolerance, in the physical world, is the gap between specification and construction. Patent disputes often live in that same gap.
Iowa and Minnesota Bars - 1997 to present
Tom reads claims the way an engineer reads drawings: looking for what is load-bearing and what is decoration. A planter row, a steel detail, a claim limitation: each is a small unit of intent doing more work than it appears to.
Each became part of how he reads a claim.
Practice
prosecution
Drafting and shepherding US utility and design applications through the USPTO, with deep experience in agricultural equipment, electromechanical systems, row-unit electronics, and equipment-control architecture.
litigation
District court infringement and validity work, Federal Circuit briefing, and appellate posture built into the record from the start.
ipr
PTAB inter partes review and ex parte reexamination for petitioners and patent owners, especially in mechanical and agricultural technology centers.
trademark
Clearance, prosecution, opposition, and trade-dress strategy for marks and product identity that need to survive field use as well as registration.
licensing
License drafting and negotiation around field-of-use, sublicensing, royalty stacking, patented hardware, and technology transfer between OEMs and integrators.
Selected matters
1999 - Federal Circuit en banc
Appellate - trade dress
Argued the Federal Circuit appeal for Midwest Industries. The en banc court confirmed that Federal Circuit law governs patent-preemption analysis for state-law trade-dress claims around watercraft-trailer winch-post designs.
175 F.3d 1356 (Fed. Cir. 1999) (en banc)
Read the opinion at CourtListener
2014 to 2026 - district court, PTAB, Federal Circuit
Litigation - PTAB - appellate
A long-running patent dispute involving combine header-height control, with work spanning trial, inter partes review, retrial, and Federal Circuit appeal.
N.D. Ind. 3:14-cv-00575 - S.D. Iowa 3:22-cv-00010 - CAFC 24-1598
View the dockets at CourtListener
1999 to present - USPTO
Prosecution portfolio
Long-running prosecution work around planting equipment, seed metering, downforce control, trench closers, and row-unit control architecture.
Browse the assignee portfolio at Google PatentsCounsel of record for selected matters
Selected matters - 1997 to present. Client marks are review-gated before launch.
Selected press
Twin Cities Business
Quoted on the America Invents Act's effects on small inventors, PTAB inter partes review, and trade-secret strategy after Alice.
Minnesota Lawyer
Identified as Chair of the firm's Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group.
REJournals
Reporting on election to the firm's Board of Directors.
Contact
New matters by direct introduction. A line about the technology, the posture, and any conflicts you can name is the right opening.
