Donald Edward Tiller

My practice focuses on intellectual property and technology. I provide legal and technical counsel as an advocate and as a neutral. My practice includes issues related to patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and contracts. 

I have always been fascinated with applications of technology. This fascination resulted in a masters degree in physics. My graduate-school research focus was experimental nuclear physics, which included designing sensors and support electronics as well as interpretive algorithms. I later worked as a field engineer in the oil industry for about five years. My focus was using high-technology instruments to determine geophysical properties of wellbore environments. After that, I spent about seven years in R&D as a research scientist and project manager. I focused on designing, developing, and acquiring nuclear-physics-based instruments. I am a named inventor on five U.S. patents. 

Over the years, I became fascinated with entrepreneurship based on technology and intellectual property. This led to law school, and eight+ years practicing law. My early legal experience was heavily weighted toward litigation involving intellectual property or technology and has since evolved to include transactional matters and patent and trademark prosecution. Legal issues with respect to technology and intellectual property often center on the value of a particular piece of technology or intellectual property. (Why invest $10,000 in a patent application?) After repeatedly digging into entrepreneurial economics (e.g., projecting or allocating returns on investment into a new technology), I decided to formalize my study. I am currently working toward an MBA. My primary interest is entrepreneurial finance within mature, emerging, and start-up businesses.