IP lawyer who represented TiVo is Trump’s pick as USPTO chief

Andrei Iancu has enforced patents for TiVo and Immersion Corp.

President Donald Trump has selected Andrei Iancu, the managing partner of a major Los Angeles law firm, to be the next head of the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Iancu has been a partner at Irell & Manella since 2004 and was an associate at the firm for five years earlier.

His most notable work in the tech sector is likely his representation of TiVo Corp. in its long-running patent battles with companies like EchoStar, Motorola, Microsoft, Verizon, and Cisco. TiVo ultimately succeeded in compelling those defendants to pay up for its pioneering DVR patents, and payments to TiVo ultimately totaled more than $1.6 billion, according to Iancu's biography page.

Iancu also had a hand in Immersion Corp's $82 million jury verdict against Sony Computer Entertainment in which a jury found that Immersion's patent claims on tactile feedback technology were valid and infringed.

Those big wins aside, most of Iancu's work has been on the defense side. He has represented eBay in a case against Acacia Research Corp., a large publicly traded non-practicing entity, and he worked for Hewlett-Packard when it defended against Xerox patent claims.

He has also worked in the medical device area, enforcing patents for St Jude Medical on vascular closure devices.

Iancu represented Ariosa Diagnostics in a case against Sequenom and succeeded in invalidating a genetic testing patent. The Sequenom decision was not popular among biotech companies and the lawyers who represent them.

The Irell & Manella firm once defended Trump, along with NBC Universal and Mark Burnett Productions, against a claim of copyright infringement related to The Apprentice. There's no indication Iancu was involved in that case.

Iancu earned his JD, along with an MS in mechanical engineering and a BS in aerospace engineering, from UCLA. He worked as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft before attending law school.

Handling the business of a large and successful law firm like Irell & Manella means that Iancu is no slouch when it comes to management skills. And his varied set of clients could help him avoid the tug of war that often pops up between tech and pharma over how to manage the patent system.

If confirmed by the Senate, Iancu will replace Michelle Lee, the outgoing USPTO director who left shortly after Trump's inauguration. Lee, a former Google attorney, was a favorite of the tech sector.