The Computer & Communications Industry Association has added to its strong intellectual property team by hiring Matthew Levy as Patent Counsel. Levy’s legal background includes working for Hogan & Hartson; Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner LLP and most recently for Cloudigy Law, PLLC. He will handle legal, policy advocacy, and regulatory matters related to patents and be a lead blogger for CCIA’s Patent Progress.
Matt’s background brings unique qualifications. He has filed and prosecuted patents before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and he has first-hand experience in patent litigation, representing companies such as FedEx and Philips Electronics in U.S. District Courts. A number of those cases involved defending clients against patent trolls.
Before law school, Matt was a software engineer at IBM in Lexington, KY, as part of the team that developed and maintained Lotus Sametime, IBM’s real-time messaging and conferencing product. He is co-inventor on U.S. Patent Application 10/745,091, which was recently allowed by the PTO.
“We are excited to bring Matt on board. His background as a leading legal expert on patent law as well as a software developer brings an important skill set to our team as we continue the push for further reform of our malfunctioning patent system,” said CCIA President & CEO Ed Black.
Matt graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center magna cum laude with the Order of the Coif, winning the ABA/BNA Award for Excellence in Intellectual Property. He received a Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky, where he won the Presidential Fellowship twice. His research at UK was in computational complexity theory and artificial intelligence. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern Maine.
Matt is still a software developer in his spare time. He developed an app for the iPad, Federal Local Rules, which is available on the App Store.