close

For more than four decades, Fenwick & West has helped some of the world’s most recognized companies become, and remain, market leaders. From emerging enterprises to large public corporations, our clients are leaders in the technology, life sciences and cleantech sectors and are fundamentally changing the world through rapid innovation.

Read more about our firm's overview

Fenwick & West was founded in 1972 in the heart of Silicon Valley—before “Silicon Valley” existed—by four visionary lawyers who left a top-tier New York law firm to pursue their shared belief that technology would revolutionize the business world and to pioneer the legal work for those technological innovations. In order to be most effective, they decided they needed to move to a location close to primary research and technology development. These four attorneys opened their first office in downtown Palo Alto, and Fenwick became one of the first technology law firms in the world.

Read more about our firm's history

From our founding in 1972, Fenwick has been committed to promoting diversity and inclusion both within our firm and throughout the legal profession. For almost four decades, the firm has actively promoted an open and inclusive work environment and committed significant resources towards improving our diversity efforts at every level.

Read more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion

At Fenwick, we are proud of our commitment to the community and to our culture of making a difference in the lives of individuals and organizations in the communities where we live and work. We recognize that providing legal services is not only an essential part of our professional responsibility, but also an excellent opportunity for our attorneys to gain valuable practical experience, learn new areas of the law and contribute to the community.

Read more about our pro bono work

Year after year, Fenwick & West is honored for excellence in the legal profession. Many of our attorneys are recognized as leaders in their respective fields, and our Corporate, Tax, Litigation and Intellectual Property Practice Groups consistently receive top national and international rankings, including:

  • Nearly 15 percent of Fenwick partners named America's Leading Lawyers for Business by Chambers USA and Chambers Global
  • Selected as a "Go-To" law firm by in-house legal departments at Fortune 500 companies in Corporate Counsel magazine
  • Named to The National Law Journal's inaugural "Intellectual Property Hot List" for outstanding patent, copyright, trademark and IP litigation services

Read more about Fenwick's awards, honors and rankings

We take sustainability very seriously at Fenwick. Like many of our clients, we are adopting policies that reduce consumption and waste, and improve efficiency. By using technologies developed by a number of our cleantech clients, we are at the forefront of implementing sustainable policies and practices that minimize environmental impact. In fact, Fenwick has earned recognition in several areas as one of the top US law firms for implementing sustainable business practices.

Read more about our commitment to sustainability and cleantech

At Fenwick, we have a passion for excellence and innovation that mirrors our client base. Our firm is making revolutionary changes to the practice of law through substantial investments in proprietary technology tools and processes—allowing us to deliver best-in-class legal services more effectively.

Read more about our firm’s service innovations

Mountain View Office
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
650.988.8500

San Francisco Office
555 California Street
12th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104
415.875.2300

Seattle Office
1191 Second Avenue
10th Floor
Seattle, WA 98101
206.389.4510

GO

Robert R. Sachs

Industry Lead, Software

Partner, Intellectual Property  

icon partner 415.875.2410  

Office: San Francisco

Mr. Sachs is resident in the San Francisco office and his practice concentrates on strategic patent counseling and prosecution for software technologies. Mr. Sachs has extensive experience in developing patent portfolios for companies of all sizes, from startups to multi-nationals.

He is also the primary patent evaluator for various patent pools on today's most important audio, video, and communications technologies, including 3GPP-LTE, WiMAX, IEEE 802.11, MPEG-4 AAC, DVB-MHP, OCAP, Digital Radio Mondiale, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AMR-WB+, G.711, G.729, AGORA-C, and NFC-IP.​

One of Mr. Sachs’ areas of expertise is patentable subject matter:  the question of what kinds of inventions are eligible for patent protection, and particularly whether software and life sciences related inventions are patentable.  This issue has become the new battleground in the development of the patent law, with several important cases having been recently decided by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  While most authors and scholars take a results-oriented approach to this question, Mr. Sachs instead starts with the first principles of creativity and innovation that drive humans to solve functional problems.  From that understanding, software and life sciences inventions are squarely in the domain of what the patent law is designed to protect.

Speaking Engagements

Mr. Sachs has been a speaker and panelist at many conferences, including:

  • “Patent-Eligible Subject Matter: A Walk Through the Jurisprudential Morass of § 101,” Practicing Law Institute 7th Annual Patent Law Institute, March 18-19, 2013, San Francisco, CA
  • The Federalist Society, "Boon or Bane for Technological Innovation?: Software Patents," November 6, 2012
  • Critical Debrief: “The Patentability of Ideas: The Impact of Prometheus," July 24, 2012, Washington D.C.
  • Palo Alto Bar Association, “Punishing Prometheus: The Supreme Court’s Destruction of Patent Value,” May 8, 2012, Palo Alto, CA
  • Licensing Executive Society, World IP Day: Around the World with LES, "Philosophy, The Patent Law, and Innovation," April 26, 2012, USPTO, Alexandria, VA
  • Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, 12th Annual Silicon Valley Advanced Patent Law Institute, "Patentable Subject Matter: The Ongoing Saga of Section 101," December 8-9, 2011, Palo Alto, CA
  • Practicing Law Institute, "CyberSource, Classen and Ultramercial: What it means for Software Patents," October 24, 2011
  • 2011 Congress on Patent Strategies for the Financial Services Industry, "Bilski vs. Kappos: How Bilski Changes the Law of Patentable Subject Matter, and its Effect on Present and Future Patent Programs, and Effective Patent Strategies," September 19-20, 2011, New York, NY
  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Magistrate Judges Retreat, "The Art and Science of Patent Prosecution," September 7, 2011, Moss Beach, CA
  • Eighth Annual Stanford E-Commerce Best Practices Conference, "E-Commerce Patents: Patent Marketplace to Patent Litigation," June 24, 2011, Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA
  • American Intellectual Property Law Association, 2011 Spring Meeting, "Philosophy and Patents," May 12-14, 2011, San Francisco, CA
  • Churchill Club Great Debate: Should Software Be Patentable?, Fenwick & West LLP, Mountain View, CA, February 16, 2011
  • USPTO's 2010 Business Methods Partnership Meeting, "No Longer Business as Usual: Bilski v. Kappos and the Future of Patentable Subject Matter," United States Patent & Trademark Office, September 23, 2010.
  • Seventh Annual Stanford Ecommerce Best Practices Conference, Stanford Law School, June 25, 2010.
  • Bilski Amicus Roundtable, Fenwick & West LLP, Mountain View, CA, July 10, 2009.
  • Sixth Annual Stanford Ecommerce Best Practices Conference, Stanford Law School, June 12, 2009.
  • Licensing Executive Society 2009 Winter Meeting, "Patent Pools: Still Relevant After All These Years," San Antonio Texas, February 26, 2009.
  • Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal 2009 Symposium, Shifting Strategies in Patent Law, Santa Clara Law School, January 30, 2009.
  • Mobile TV & Video Summit at NAB2007, "Strategic Legal Considerations for MoTV Businesses," Las Vegas, Nevada, April 17, 2007.
  • Software IP Strategy Summit, "Strategies for Claim Drafting for Business Method and Financial Patents," Palo Alto, California, February 20, 2007.
  • Business Method Patents in the United States, at Patent Law Year in Review: 2006, Palo Alto, California, January 19, 2007

Selected Publications

Mr. Sachs is the author of several articles on patent strategy, including:

Key Experience

  • Created patent strategy for one of the early Internet music download websites, for which primary patent on system architecture sold for $7 million
  • Patented fundamental mutual fund model of age-based lifecycle mutual funds for a leading financial service company, now a $110 billion market
  • Patented demand forecasting models for private software firm, used by several multinational retailers and fast food chains
  • Negotiated patent license with world's largest software and computer company, resulting in savings to client in excess of $5 million in royalties
  • Created patent strategy for leading casino and hotel management company, including prosecution of strategic patents on player tracking systems

Sample Patents

Internet Technologies

Graphics

Computers and Communications

Financial Inventions

User Interface

Predictive Modeling and Solutions

Information Retrieval

Interactive Television

Gaming

Miscellaneous

More
​​
FILTER
 

About Bob
our Clients
our Clients