Joel Watkins Shaffer is a registered patent attorney with extensive experience in patent preparation and patent prosecution.  She has represented a broad range of clients, including various multinational Fortune 500 companies and individual inventors.  Joel has performed preparation and prosecution of U.S. and foreign patent applications relating to a wide variety of computer, electrical and mechanical technologies, including digital and wireless communications, networking, neural networks and machine learning, imaging, beamforming, electro-magnetic systems, multiprocessor and embedded systems, optical systems, and additive manufacturing.

 

Joel has patent licensing experience in drafting and reviewing Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and Joint Development Agreements (JDAs) for a multinational company; these responsibilities included generating amendments and counseling business unit leaders regarding the impact of various clauses in these instruments.

    

Prior to obtaining her law degree, Joel completed fifteen years of electrical engineering work at two different multinational semiconductor companies, with a focus on memory devices and microcontroller applications. In roles as a design and applications engineer, Joel represented her employers in industry standard-setting meetings (JEDEC) for FSRAM and microchip Interface Standards, and worked with logic verification tools to simulate, exercise, and demonstrate performance of embedded DRAM designs.  Joel has also worked in the Cadence design environment and with various programmer boards, programming languages, and development tools.  During this time, Joel co-authored a patent and joined the technical ladder.

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Education

J.D., Indiana University School of Law–Bloomington 

M.P.A., Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs

M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of New Mexico

B.E., Biomedical Engineering, University of New Mexico

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Admissions

State Bar of Arizona

State Bar of Colorado

United States Patent and Trademark Office