Robert M. Asher

Robert M. Asher is a partner at Bromberg & Sunstein and chairs the firm’s Patent Reexamination Practice Group. Bob specializes in patent litigation and prosecution with a particular emphasis on reexamination, which operates at the intersection between litigation and prosecution. He is an astute and accomplished advocate for inventors and businesses affected by patents.

Experience

Developed patent portfolios that have contributed to significant acquisitions, licenses and litigation settlements.
A software patent pioneer, having been one of the first to patent an expert system in the mid-1980's.
He has made extensive use of his knowledge of patent office tactics and procedures. In one situation, by figuring out how reexamination or reissue could be used effectively to strengthen the client's patent, Bob was able to deflate a challenge to the existing license, preserving the royalty payments to the client.
Defeated a patent infringement claim for a Fortune 500 client in district court and the Federal Circuit by successfully making use of the doctrine of judicial estoppel.
Bob has challenged patents in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by filing reexaminations or protests that successfully limited the scope of the competitor's patents.
He has been sought out to defend valuable patents challenged in reexamination, while the patents were being asserted in patent infringement litigation.
Bob has rendered opinions regarding validity or infringement and assisted with designing around patents. In one case, Bob's opinion of invalidity was challenged in court and he was required to testify on behalf of our client. The court and jury were persuaded consistent with the logic of Bob's opinion and testimony that the patents in question were invalid.
Bob has prosecuted patent applications for a wide variety of businesses and technologies including integrated circuits, data storage, interactive television, financial services, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, food, digitizing tablets, bottling and weighing equipment, microwave antennas, caching, scanning, printing, telecommunications and bar codes.
Bob devotes a significant portion of his practice to intellectual property litigation matters in which he has worked on behalf of numerous companies, of national and international scope. Specific patent cases have involved technologies including automotive trim carpets, interactive cable television, power converters, solar cells, microwave antennas, consumer electronic appliances, satellite tuners, robot arms, call routing, flame detectors and ACL surgery. In other intellectual property litigation, he has addressed issues of copyright infringement, trade dress and trademark infringement.

Professional and Community Involvement

Bob has been a frequent seminar panelist for the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Clerk and board member of Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action. Former officer of the New England Region of American Jewish Congress.
Active member of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association and of the Patent Law Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.

Honors

Bob graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering with honors from Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School.
In 2007, Bob was named by the publishers of Law & Politics and Boston magazine a "Super Lawyer" in the field of intellectual property in Massachusetts, which is limited to the top 5 percent of attorneys in each state, as chosen by their peers and through independent research.

Bar and Court Admissions

He is registered patent attorney number 30,445 on the register of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
He is admitted to the state courts of Massachusetts and Illinois. His federal court admissions include the United States Supreme Court, the Court of Claims, the Federal, First and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeal, the district courts of Massachusetts and Northern District of Illinois.
He is a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Federal Circuit Bar Association, American Bar Association, Boston Patent Law Association, Boston Bar Association and the International Intellectual Property Association.