Thomas Ewing is a commercial lawyer, registered patent attorney, and intellectual property counselor with more than 25 years of experience in the IP field.  In his consulting practice, Tom routinely advises international organizations, government agencies, universities, law firms, multinational corporations and financial institutions. Tom has been recognized as one of the world’s 250 best IP strategists by IAM Magazine in every edition of its IAM 250 since the list’s inception in 2009.

Tom counsels commercial entities of all sizes, as well as venture capital and private equity firms. Tom has represented a wide range of high technology companies during his career, including Alcatel, Apertio, Apple, Ceva, Cisco, eBay, Honda, Intuit, Listen (Rhapsody), Micron, NEC, Netflix, Samsung, Sharp, T-Netix, Tribune Media Services, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan, Inc.  He has also represented investors such as Accel Partners, Amadeus, the Environmental Technologies Fund, HgCapital, Kleiner Perkins, and Oak Investment Partners.

Tom authored the World Intellectual Property Organization’s textbook and course materials for an international patent agent training program. The textbook has been translated into six languages and used in dozens of training courses by WIPO staff.  Tom has personally trained patent agents from nearly 40 countries and led WIPO training courses in India, Singapore, Switzerland, Poland, Thailand, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Zimbabwe. Tom also authored a course for WIPO in intellectual property valuation and trained students in valuation from nearly 15 countries.

Tom coined the term “patent privateer” and has used the phrase in numerous academic and general publications. Please find a link to Tom’s academic publications here. He has lectured on intellectual property and commercial law at universities worldwide and co-taught courses in intellectual asset management and commercial law at the prestigious Chalmers University of Technology.

Tom assisted Vinnova, the Swedish government’s agency for innovation, in structuring its agreements for research and development collaborations and other related projects.  He also assisted the government of Tanzania in developing its national IP plan.

Tom previously served as Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Officer at OpenTV, Inc., an interactive television company then owned by Liberty Media Corp.  Tom managed the worldwide intellectual property development efforts for OpenTV’s portfolio of nearly 2,000 issued and pending patents.  He directed and managed patent litigation cases venued in federal district court and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  Tom also served as IP coordinator for various worldwide standards organizations, performed due diligence on third-party IP portfolios, and structured and negotiated various IP-related agreements.

Tom has worked as an attorney at law firms in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Seattle, and Washington, DC.  In private practice, he focused on developing and managing intellectual property portfolios, conducting strategic analyses of various large patent portfolios, and supporting patent infringement litigations. His expertise includes software and computer-related inventions, telecommunications, business methods, bioinformatics, and electro-mechanical devices.

Before entering the legal profession, Tom served as a member of the technical staff of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and as a patent agent at the California Institute of Technology.  As an engineer, Tom helped develop interactive training simulators for various governmental and international organizations.

Tom has spoken at numerous conferences and training seminars worldwide, including the IP Business Congress (2011, 2013), the European Venture Capital Association (2008, 2007), the Computer Law Association’s European conference (2005) and the PatSoft conference (2006). He is a co-author of “Software Patents: Procuring and Enforcing,” The Patent Resources Group (April 1999) and “Strategies for Obtaining U.S. Patent Protection for Software Related Inventions,” Derwent Information Patent Strategic Seminar (Tokyo, Japan; 1998).  He has also spoken at IP conferences held at Chalmers University.

Tom is also senior legal editor and general counsel at aNewDomain, an online current affairs and culture magazine focusing on new technology founded in 2011 by award-winning journalists Gina Smith, John C. Dvorak, and Jerry Pournelle.

Tom was awarded his J.D. in 1996 from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco where he became a national quarter finalist in the Giles Sutherland Rich Moot Court Competition. Tom completed his dissertation for a licentiate degree in industrial management and economics at Chalmers University in 2011.  He received an M.S. in Engineering and Policy from Washington University in St. Louis in 1988, and he received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa in 1985. Tom has also received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English literature. He is a member of the State Bars of California (1996) and Washington (1998, presently inactive) and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (1990).