Independent/Consultant

Firm overview. The tracked entity is not a conventional law firm but a solo "Independent/Consultant" practice built around C. Eric Schulman, a Palo Alto-based, MIT-trained patent attorney (B.S./M.S. physics) who is a principal in Fish & Richardson's Silicon Valley (Redwood City) office and a former IP head at Uber and legal director at Google. The practice has no disclosed office footprint or AmLaw/Chambers firm ranking; Schulman's individual recognitions include IAM Patent 1000 ("Leading Patent Professional," highly recommended for post-grant procedures), IAM Strategy 300, and a 2022 Chambers USA client testimonial. He is also the founder of the LOT Network. Caution: none of these rankings are firm-level, and no headcount or revenue figures for the independent practice are publicly available.

IP litigation specialty and side preference. The practice's tracked docket is a single PTAB appearance — as back-up counsel for Unified Patents (the NPE-deterrence organization) in an inter partes review. The underlying patent, U.S. Patent 6,415,207, covers an automated vehicle-status information/telecommunications system, consistent with Schulman's software, internet, and telecommunications background. The recorded posture is plaintiff/petitioner-side (1 appearance, 0 defendant-side), but with a notable caveat: the client, Unified Patents, is an anti-patent-assertion-entity organization, so the work is defensive in substance — invalidating patents asserted by NPEs rather than asserting patents.

Notable case. Unified Patents Inc. v. Shipping & Transit LLC (IPR2016-01465) challenged all claims 1–15 of the '207 patent on obviousness grounds. The PTAB instituted review on February 1, 2017, and the case was terminated on March 31, 2017 after the parties settled (joint motion to terminate under 35 U.S.C. § 317(a)). The matter was part of Unified's 2016 campaign against the three most prolific patent trolls of the year; Shipping & Transit (f/k/a Arrival Star) had asserted the patent in 85+ suits and sent hundreds of demand letters to small businesses.

PTAB/IPR practice and key figures. The practice's tracked footprint is IPR-only — one proceeding, back-up counsel role. Schulman is the sole named attorney, and there are no other practice leaders to profile. Any broader IPR/litigation reputation attaches to his Fish & Richardson work rather than to this independent docket, so claims of a large-scale IPR practice on the independent side would not be supportable from public sources.