Overview
Christian A. Camarce is a director in Sterne Kessler’s Electronics Practice Group and a co-chair of the Patent Prosecution Practice. Christian focuses his practice on patent portfolio management and global intellectual property strategy. Leveraging his experience as a former senior integrated circuit design engineer, Christian counsels clients to obtain and enforce patent protection in a wide variety of technologies, including chip design and packaging, semiconductor fabrication, and wireless communications. He has been recognized as one of the best performing and most active attorneys in patent prosecution and in Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings.
Christian is actively involved in the firm’s award-winning post-grant practice, where he represents patent owners and petitioners in inter partes review proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Patent Trial and Appeal Board. These proceedings involve technologies related to semiconductor devices, memory design, power management systems, and chip design and packaging. He has also represented patent owners and requesters in reexamination proceedings before the USPTO’s Central Reexamination Unit, in which these proceedings involved technologies related to mixed-signal circuits, memory interfaces, and antenna designs.
Christian stays abreast of the latest developments and trends in the semiconductor field and shares his insights with the patent community through publications and presentations. He is also a contributing author of Patent Office Litigation, Second Edition, published in 2017 by Thomson Reuters Westlaw. The book provides a fresh and comprehensive exploration of patent office litigation proceedings, including how the proceedings interact with other aspects of patent procurement and enforcement, while delivering practical analysis and advice.
Prior to joining Sterne Kessler, Christian was a senior integrated circuit design engineer at Intel Corporation. His engineering experience focused on the research, design, and validation of analog integrated circuits on multiple generations of Flash memory products. In graduate school at the University of Florida, he was a teaching assistant for a semiconductor device physics course and a recipient of the Semiconductor Research Corporation Fellowship. His graduate research concentrated on damage and diffusion mechanisms of silicon due to ion implantation. The results from his research have been used in predictive models for a software tool distributed to the semiconductor industry. Christian also attended the University of Florida as an undergraduate, where he received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering, cum laude.
Christian earned his J.D. from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, where he was chief articles editor for the Pacific McGeorge Global Business & Development Law Journal. He also served as a judicial extern to the Honorable Frank C. Damrell, Jr., former U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of California. After law school, Christian served as in-house counsel for a leader in genetic sequencing technology—where he developed patent strategies and managed patent portfolios related to BioFET-based semiconductor chips for next-generation genetic sequencing applications.
Representative Matters
Inter Partes Review Proceedings
- Served as patent owner’s counsel in inter partes review proceeding related to RF transceiver technology. Subject patent was also involved in concurrent district court litigation.
- Served as patent owner’s counsel in inter partes review proceedings related to Flash and DRAM memory designs. Subject patents were also involved in concurrent district court litigations.
- Served as patent owner’s counsel in inter partes review proceedings related to integrated circuit power management techniques. Subject patents were also involved in concurrent district court litigations.
- Served as patent owner’s counsel in inter partes review proceeding related to mobile interface technology. Subject patent was also involved in concurrent district court litigation.
- Served as petitioner’s counsel in inter partes review proceedings related to electronic commerce systems. Subject patents were also involved in multiple concurrent district court litigations.
- Served as petitioner’s counsel in inter partes review proceedings directed to integrated circuit packaging. Successfully canceled all challenged claims.
Reexamination Proceedings
- Served as inter partes reexamination counsel for third party requester, a leader in consumer electronics. Subject patent was directed to imaging devices and also involved in concurrent district court litigation.
- Served as reexamination counsel for patent owner, a fractal antenna technology company. Defended patent owner in inter partes reexamination proceedings before the USPTO, in which patents were also involved in concurrent district court litigation.
- Served as reexamination counsel for patent owner, a high-speed chip interface company. Defended patent owner in inter partes reexamination proceedings before the USPTO, in which patents subject to reexamination were also involved in concurrent district court and U.S. International Trade Commission litigations.
- Provided strategic reexamination consultation to patent owner, a high-performance and mixed-signal semiconductor company, whose patents were subject to ex parte reexamination proceedings before the USPTO and were involved in district court litigation.
Education
- J.D., University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law
- M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Florida
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Florida, cum laude