Robert Saltzberg is a partner in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster LLP. He leads the Electronics Patent Practice and the Electronics Venture Intellectual Property Group in the firm’s Bay Area offices. Mr. Saltzberg focuses on patent prosecution, developing patent infringement and validity positions in litigation and adversarial licensing contexts, patent due diligence, and patent reexamination. His work encompasses fields such as telecommunications, Internet services, fiber optics, medical devices, networking, network security, computer architecture, mass storage devices, and signal, image, speech, ultrasound, and optical signal processing.

Mr. Saltzberg’s patent practice benefits from his extensive expertise in patent prosecution and litigation, as well as his experience as in-house patent counsel for a high-technology company. His well-rounded background allows him to develop and analyze patent portfolios with a sophisticated understanding of a client’s strategic business objectives. His IP due diligence work involves determining the strength of a target company’s patent portfolio and the target’s freedom to operate. He prepares reexaminations as strategic leverage in patent litigation. Mr. Saltzberg also develops patent infringement and validity arguments in litigation and adversarial licensing contexts, often leading to favorable settlements for his clients.

Mr. Saltzberg earned a B.S., summa cum laude, in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland (receiving the Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award), an M.S.E.E. from Stanford University, and a J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. In law school he was an associate editor of the High Technology Law Journal.

During a hiatus from Morrison & Foerster in 2001, Mr. Saltzberg served as Chief Patent Counsel of Novera Optics, Inc., a developer of acousto-optic tunable filters used in optical networks. At Novera, Mr. Saltzberg prepared intellectual property-related agreements and managed the patent portfolio, focusing on commercially valuable inventions in a cost-sensitive environment.

Mr. Saltzberg also worked as an engineer at TRW, Inc., developing adaptive antenna array and communication signal processing algorithms in support of satellite programs. At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, he wrote simulations of digital image matching and radar range profiling for vehicle navigation purposes.

Mr. Saltzberg has lectured at Boalt Hall on intellectual property-related topics such as patent cross-licensing strategies and patents in an industry-standards context.

Representative Matters

Patent Prosecution

• Yahoo!, Quantum Corp., and IPWireless

Patent Reexaminations

• Yahoo!, Negevtech, Seagate

Patent Due Diligence

• Goldman Sachs (investor-side)
• Digimarc (company-side)
• Dotcast (company-side)

Adversarial Licensing

• Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing - patent analysis and adversarial license negotiations regarding interactive call processing patents for a variety of clients
• Fujitsu-TI Semiconductor Cross-License - validity and infringement analysis in support of semiconductor cross-licensing negotiations; one of the most significant semiconductor patent “portfolio swaps” in the industry

Patent Litigation: Infringement and Validity Analysis

• Yahoo! v. Xfire (represented plaintiff Yahoo!)
• Patriot Scientific v. Fujitsu (represented defendant Fujitsu)
• In the Matter of Certain Video Graphics Display Controllers and Products Containing Same (represented plaintiff Cirrus Logic)