Greg H Gardella is a partner in Oblon Spivak McClelland Maier & Neustadt LLP’s post-grant patent practice group, focusing on post-grant patent proceedings, patent prosecution, strategic counselling, due diligence investigations and pre-suit investigations. Mr Gardella is a former litigator, having spent the first several years of his practice handling high-stakes patent litigation for various Fortune 100 clients. He leverages his extensive litigation background to focus on adversarial post-grant US Patent and Trademark Office proceedings. A distinguished re-examination specialist, he has handled a significant amount of high-profile patent re-examination disputes, such as the noteworthy defence of the famous TiVo time warp patent. The successful defence of the TiVo patent re-examination has led to settlements with rivals EchoStar and AT&T totalling in excess of $700 million plus ongoing royalty obligations, with a similar suit against Verizon pending.

Mr Gardella also develops and manages the patent portfolios of mid-sized and large technology-focused companies. He has extensive experience in strategic enforcement and freedom to operate counselling, where he advises companies on how best to enforce their patent portfolios and take defensive measures to circumvent patent assertions by competitors.

Mr Gardella has substantial education and experience in the following technical areas: semiconductor fabrication and device structure (eg, vapour deposition, etch, patterning, spinon coatings, implant, epitaxy, light-emitting diodes, power metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors, solar cells and liquid crystal displays), computer architecture (eg, superscalar uPs, graphics/memory controllers, I/O controllers, adapters, bridges, direct memory access, cache coherency and power management), wireless telecommunications (eg, global system for mobile communication, IS-95/54, general packet radio service and 3G standards, including wideband code division multiple access, code division multiple access- 2000 and universal mobile telecommunications systems; security protocols; vocoding; bridging; and duplexing), network data communication (eg, bluetooth and other wireless protocols, access control, routing, asynchronous transfer mode, enterprise platforms, active server pages and virtual private networks), software ranging from microcode to application layer (eg, middleware, OS, SSL, drivers, application layer suites and environments including C, C++, Java, XML, HTML, TEK, Perl, HDLs), medical devices (eg, implantable devices, surgical devices, automated pharmacy systems, defibrillators, spinal implants, slow release implants and endoscopic devices), signal processing, embedded controllers, very large scale integration design, microstructured films and various types of industrial equipment.