Erik Fuehrer

I'll research this attorney's professional background and verify the case details.

Let me verify the notable case outcomes and check the firm history question raised by a conflicting profile.

Now let me verify the tracked cases and the IPR/PTAB question, plus check the conflicting firm profile.

Erik Fuehrer — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Specialty / focus areas. Fuehrer is a DLA Piper partner whose practice is concentrated in patent and complex commercial litigation in U.S. district courts, the International Trade Commission, and arbitration. His firm bio and Legal 500 profile describe the technology mix as software, consumer electronics and products, semiconductors, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence. The tracked docket reflects that: smartphone/personal-electronics and image-processing patents (the Maxell matters), touchscreen and display technology (SoftView; Neodron), cellular/wireless devices (Barkan Wireless), semiconductor devices and SRAM (Freescale v. CSR/Zoran; Cypress v. GSI), optical disc drives, and web/search optimization software (BrightEdge v. Searchmetrics; QOMPLX v. Microsoft). There is no evident pharmaceutical, life-sciences, or standards-essential/FRAND practice in either the tracked cases or the searchable record.

Side preference. He is principally a defense-side lawyer for operating companies. Four of his five tracked appearances are as counsel for the accused infringer (Samsung in the Maxell, SoftView, and VB Assets matters), and the fifth — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Maxell, Ltd. — has Samsung as plaintiff in a declaratory-judgment posture arising out of the same licensing dispute. Consistent with that, his searchable client list is almost entirely product manufacturers (Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, HP, GSI Technology, CSR/Zoran, Searchmetrics). I found no NPE/PAE plaintiff-side enforcement practice; the one non-defense-flavored item, Barkan Wireless IP Holdings v. Samsung, was also a defense.

Firm context. DLA Piper is the only firm associated with him in the tracked data, and it is his current firm; he is based in the Palo Alto office and has appeared under the DLA Piper name since at least 2008. His firm bio states he has handled 50+ Texas district court cases, 40 California district court cases, and 20 ITC investigations since 2007. Before private practice he externed for Judge Ronald M. Whyte (N.D. Cal.) in summer 2005. (A third-party "AKD Partners" people page reproduces his DLA Piper bio verbatim; I could not verify any move, and I would not treat it as a reliable firm-change signal.)

Notable cases and outcomes. The signature result is Maxell, Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co. (E.D. Tex.): after a May 2025 jury verdict of roughly $111.7 million for willful infringement of three Maxell patents, Judge Robert Schroeder III granted Samsung JMOL of non-infringement on all three patents and invalidity as to two, vacating the award in September 2025 (the unsealed opinion faulted Maxell's expert testimony as conclusory); the case is on appeal, with Maxell seeking to stay pending related PTAB proceedings. He is also credited on the ITC and N.D. Cal. defense of Samsung against Technology Properties Limited (no-violation finding at the ITC, favorable claim construction, then summary judgment of non-infringement, largely affirmed on the claim-construction appeal), the Cypress v. GSI SRAM investigation (ALJ and Commission findings of no infringement and no domestic industry, plus one patent held invalid), and Optical Disc Drives (337-TA-897), where the ALJ twice found no standing and the Commission upheld. His DLA Piper bio also describes a Northern California wireless-communication defense in which summary judgment of non-infringement was affirmed by the Federal Circuit in a precedential decision on whether IPR preliminary-proceedings statements can create prosecution history disclaimer — that decision is Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 856 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2017), and court filings list Fuehrer among DLA Piper counsel of record in the underlying litigation. Note that the party designations in the extracted docket headers for that case are inconsistent because of joint filings, so I would confirm his specific client before citing it.

PTAB / IPR experience. He works IPRs in parallel with district court defense, though the public record doesn't show him as a high-volume lead PTAB practitioner. PTAB filings list him on DLA Piper's service/counsel teams, and in QOMPLX LLC v. Microsoft Corp. (W.D. Tex.) he is the DLA Piper contact on stipulations tied to Microsoft's IPR petitions (IPR2026-00325 and -00326 against U.S. Patent Nos. 12,301,627 and 12,301,628), and he appears in a 2020 IPR-related service list. The Maxell/Samsung dispute also generated substantial PTAB activity (including 2024–2026 decisions invalidating claims of Maxell video-processing and smart-device patents) alongside the district court case, though I could not verify his individual appearance in those specific IPRs.

Bar / education. Admitted in California (Bar No. 252578); J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law; B.A., University of California, Berkeley. Bar admissions/court admissions listed: Federal Circuit; N.D., C.D., S.D., and E.D. Cal.; E.D. Mich.; E.D. Tex.