Joseph A. Farco focuses his practice on intellectual property matters including litigation, patent, and trade secret transactions.
As a trial patent lawyer, Joe represents patent owners, including inventors, and foreign and domestic companies in district court and the International Trade Commission. He drafts complaints, answers, 12(b) motions, discovery, and discovery motions, as well as takes and defends fact, expert, and 30(b)(6) depositions. Joe handles pre-filing due diligence for patent owners on how to best assert their patents; cease-and-desist correspondence to avoid litigation; and all aspects, including oral arguments, of Markman proceedings, summary judgement briefs, pre- and post-trial memoranda, technical and damages expert preparation and discovery, accounting and costs motions, appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and petitions for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. He also spearheads electronic discovery and strategies for electronically searchable information (ESI).
Joe makes advance preparation and efficient strategy development his priorities, especially for witnesses who are not native English-speakers and where numerous experts are involved. He has prepared foreign and domestic witnesses and experts for trial.
As a registered patent attorney, Joe practices before the United States Patent and Trademark Office where he counsels clients from all over the world under America Invents Act (AIA) and pre-AIA rules to obtain patent protection in the form of utility and design patents. He has argued for his clients to obtain patents on their inventions through appeals to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. He also has been involved in challenges to patent rights under ex parte reexaminations and inter partes review proceedings.
Joe uses his litigation and prosecution experience to provide opinions concerning patentability, non-infringement, and invalidity, to assist clients in making well-informed intellectual property decisions for their business or for helping avoid allegations of induced infringement and/or willful infringement of patents.
Prior to his legal career, Joe was a project engineer for Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems, where he led a team of engineers to develop mechanical, electrical, and materials test analyses for the life-critical Extravehicular Mobility Unit worn by astronauts on space missions to and from the International Space Station.