Beffel, Ernie

Ernie is valued for creativity and excellence in the practice of intellectual property law.  His experience is both broad and deep, and includes patent prosecution and development, the preparation of opinions on infringement and validity of patents, pre-litigation analysis and resolution of licensing issues, due diligence in connection with mergers and acquisitions, as well as general advice pertaining to IP strategies and portfolio management.

Ernie is focused on asset building and problem solving.  He consistently maintains perspective on how the law fits into his client’s larger commercial strategy clients have ranged in size from multi-national corporations, to foreign and domestic privately-owned companies, to small U.S.-based ventures. 

Sincere and thoroughly prepared, Ernie is well-versed not only in technical and scientific subject matter, but also at converting such complex information into easily-understood straight-talk.  Ernie has been involved in the preparation and prosecution of patent applications in technologies including deep learning and other AI technologies, computer programs, database architectures, computer-implemented business methods, digital circuitry and IC manufacturing. His team has worked on the whole deep learning stack, from custom chips, to attention and deep learning architectures, to application of a AI technologies to genetic sequences, security, testing, advertising, voice recognition and control systems.

Ernie has also prepared and prosecuted patent applications directed to cloud computing, Web Services protocols (WSDL, UDDI), mobile to desktop synchronization, and video on-demand; for business, directed to financial planning, inventory management, on-line auctions, banking and infrastructure for business-to-business ecommerce; for targeted advertising, directed to query context and disambiguation, clustering and classification, and text and non-text search engines; for network protocols, directed to adapters, access points and switches; for compression, error correction and signal processing; for automated testing of network components and telecommunications; for IC manufacturing, directed to design, processes and instrumentation of manufacturing, and capital equipment for IC production.

Prior to his patent counseling and prosecution practice, Ernie devoted 18 years to trial practice, handling technology disputes involving patents, engineering design, contracts, construction delay and failure, and environmental clean-up, with nine months in-trial time.  Ernie’s trial presentation skills translated into desktop sharing and video interviews, have made him exceedingly effective in persuading Patent Examiners.

Ernie is a graduate of Stanford Law School and of the University of Michigan, College of Engineering (IE + OR), with Highest Honors, including Tau Beta Pi and Alpha Pi Mu.  In 1999, Ernie joined his law school classmate, Mark Haynes, to co-found HBW.