As a founding partner of the firm, Francisco has over fourteen years of intellectual property experience. Through the combination of his highly specialized educational and professional background in the law, business and engineering, he is able to provide distinctively intuitive, expert strategic counsel to his clients.
Francisco’s experience extends through a broad range of intellectual property arenas, including intellectual property litigation and licensing, copyright, patent and trademark portfolio management and development, non-infringement and invalidity opinions, and all phases of preparation and prosecution of foreign and domestic trademark and patent applications, in addition to due diligence related to mergers and acquisitions. He has also participated in various aspects of litigation relating to copyright, trademark, trade dress, and patent infringement, including 28 USC §1498 actions.
As examples of clients Francisco has represented in the past: in patent litigation are Illinois Tools Works, Abbott Laboratories, Sun Microsystems, Patriot Range Systems, Sara Lee, Innovage, and MerchSource; in trademark litigation, American Express, Innovage, and MerchSource; and in patent prosecution, Gas Research Institute, Motorola, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent), Sony Corporation, Bell and Howell Postal Systems, Sun Microsystems, Agilent Technologies, Avago Technologies, Verigy, Conexant Systems, Skyworks Solutions, Broadcom Corporation, SiRF Technology, Jazz Semiconductor, Qimonda AG, and Entropic Communications.
His wide array of technical areas of expertise includes: electromagnetic systems, such as antennas, RF, microwave, millimeter-wave and optical systems; and telecommunication systems, such as GPS, satellite, wireless and land-based telephonic communications technologies, information coding techniques, secure networks, and optical networks. Francisco expertise also includes sensor technology, power amplifiers, digital processing, signal/imaging technology, processor architecture, solid-state/semiconductor layout and processing, automated systems, software, electro-mechanical equipment and medical device technologies.
Francisco’s prior experience includes counsel and associate roles in such firms as Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal (Chicago and Los Angeles) and Wildman Harrold Allen and Dixon (Chicago), as well as in-house counsel at the Gas Research Institute (Chicago).
His most differentiating professional experience began prior to becoming an attorney, where he served as a design engineer for Hughes Aircraft Company in both Hughes’ Space & Communication and Radar Systems groups for over seven years. His technical experience as a practicing design engineer includes satellite communications, advanced electromagnetic systems, military and commercial radar antennas, digital systems, and signal/image processing.
While working within the Space & Communications group, he designed sub-systems for the Milstar and Intelsat VI satellites, and while at Radar Systems he designed radar antennas and transmitter subsystems for the F-15, F-14, F/A-18, AV-8B, B-2, and ASARS-2 fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft programs.
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois, 1986
- M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1996
- J.D., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995
- LL.M. in Intellectual Property, The John Marshall Law School, 1997
- Chicago Bar Association
- American Intellectual Property Law Association