Almanac IP Advisors LLP

Agile IP law firm for strategic Patent matters

Robert Saltzberg

Founding Partner

Rob Saltzberg

“Saltzberg’ed”: verb coined at Morrison Foerster by patent attorneys under Rob’s supervision to describe his dissection of their draft patent analyses and applications.

Rob Saltzberg is a partner at Almanac IP Advisors. Previously, he was a partner at the global law firm Morrison Foerster, and a Managing Director at the Ovidian Group IP consultancy.

Rob brings over 30 years of legal experience to a practice that includes:
• patent portfolio development and analysis
• IP due diligence for patent portfolio acquisitions and financial transactions
• offensive and defensive patent license negotiations
• enforcement-oriented, product-targeted patent claim drafting
• development of claim charts and infringement/validity arguments
• patent valuation and monetization
• litigation support
• freedom to operate studies

Much of Rob’s career has been devoted to asserting and defending patents, and assessing patents for acquisition. Insights gained from that experience inform his handling of patent applications to ensure they are well-prepared for future challenges.

Rob’s patent work has encompassed electrical engineering fields such as telecommunications, robotics, GPS, semiconductors, computer architecture, medical devices, mass storage, fiber optics, networking, and signal, image, speech, ultrasound and optical signal processing, as well as AI, AgTech, and bioinformatics.

In his previous position as Managing Director at the Ovidian Group IP consultancy, Rob worked with the engineering team to identify infringing products and develop litigation-quality claim charts for digital rights management, mobile telecommunications, and flash memory patent portfolios. Based on those charts, Rob traveled extensively in Asia to negotiate against major technology companies.

At Ovidian, Rob also applied his experience to review hundreds of patents for potential acquisition. His review uncovered many ways in which a surprisingly large number of those patents suffered from inadequate drafting and prosecution. They could have benefited from best practices that Rob has developed over decades of experience. Fortunately, in some cases, defects could be remedied through reissue or via claim amendments in continuation applications. Rob’s patent asset development practice is devoted to anticipating and avoiding obstacles to patent effectiveness, where possible.

During his 15 years at the global law firm of Morrison Foerster, Rob engaged in patent analysis and counseling in support of adversarial licensing, litigation, and due diligence efforts. Some of the licenses involved the well-known Lemelson and Ronald A. Katz patent portfolios. He was lead attorney on at least 20 reexamination proceedings. Rob also oversaw patent prosecution for clients such as Yahoo! and Quantum Corporation.

Rob served as Chief Patent Counsel at Novera Optics, a startup developer of acousto-optic tunable filters used in optical networks. Before law school, he worked as a systems engineer at TRW, developing adaptive antenna array and signal processing algorithms in support of satellite communications programs. At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, he coded simulations of digital image matching and radar range profiling for cruise missile programs.

Rob received a B.S., summa cum laude, in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, an M.S.E.E. from Stanford University, and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, Law School. While earning his B.S.E.E., Rob received the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award, and was a member of the College Bowl National Championship Team (general knowledge quiz game). The team went undefeated for 21 consecutive matches.

Rob has lectured at the UC Berkeley Law School on patent cross-licensing. He has served as a judge for the law school’s Bales Trial Competition. He has spoken on IP-related issues at venues including the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, the Intellectual Property Owners Association, the Hispanic National Bar Association, and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Startup Leadership program. Rob has been named by Intellectual Asset Management Magazine to the “IAM 300" – The World’s 300 Leading Intellectual Property Strategists.