Russ Weinzimmer, Member of Russ Weinzimmer & Associates

Russ Weinzimmer has twenty years of experience in patent law, which includes seven years of experience doing complex patent preparation and prosecution in demanding law firm environments, seven years as management in a leading corporate environment, and over six years in private law practice. Corporate and entrepreneurial experience prior to his career in law enables him to better understand the needs and objectives of his clients. Russ Weinzimmer presently advises a variety of start-up ventures.

At Cognex Corporation, as Chief Patent Counsel, Russ Weinzimmer was the first full-time in-house attorney at the company. Cognex is a global public company in the machine vision industry with more than $150 million annual revenue. Cognex Corporation won its law suit against Jerome Lemelson's limited partnership, and invalidated his machine vision patents that were used to extract millions in license fees from larger companies such as Ford and Motorola. Cognex was founded in 1981 by three MIT graduates. Starting in 1994, Russ grew the patent portfolio from two issued patents with two patents pending, to over 115 issued patents with 133 patents pending, within seven years. Russ worked closely with engineers to strategically identify patentable technology. He personally prepared and filed eight new patent applications per year , working directly with world-class company founders/inventors.

Prior to joining Cognex Corporation, Russ Weinzimmer was primarily involved in the preparation and prosecution of highly technical patent applications in a law firm environment full-time, while he attended law school in the evening. In particular, he prepared and prosecuted patent applications relating to computer software, and computer hardware, communications, medical devices, speech recognition algorithms, semiconductor devices, signal processing, database algorithms, advanced computer systems, high-temperature superconductors, image processing, high-speed modem algorithms, medical imaging and analysis, optical devices, and computer disk storage devices. He also rendered patent infringement and patent validity opinions.

Prior to entering patent law, Russ Weinzimmer was a co-founder of a software start-up, and was involved in various aspects of technology marketing in a corporate environment. He brings the perspectives gained through these business experiences to his practice of Strategic Patent Lawsm.

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David George Johnson graduated from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia with a B.S. in Engineering, cum laude. He is a licensed professional engineer who has worked in the fields of radio telemetry and instrumentation related to fluid flows of all types, including water, plastics, and other chemicals in both gas and liquid form.

David received his J.D. from the University of Virginia and subsequently worked for nine years as a patent prosecutor at one of the ten largest intellectual property law firms in the world. He has drafted patent applications in the fields of medicine, chemistry, electronics, thermoplastics, computer hardware and software, mechanical engineering and mathematics. David is licensed to practice law in California, Hawaii and Minnesota and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. David holds an Extra Class Amateur Radio license and is an instrument rated Private Pilot.