The RPX Advisory Board will be comprised primarily of representatives from member companies. The Advisory Board will help RPX address a variety of strategic and policy issues regarding the RPX service to ensure RPX has a formal forum to receive leading industry views.

The initial member participants in the Advisory Board are Cisco and IBM, and the chair is Robert Barr, Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Robert Barr, Chairman of the Advisory Board
Robert Barr is the Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT) and Lecturer-in-Residence at the University of California Berkeley School Of Law. Prior to joining BCLT in 2005, he was the first Vice President of Intellectual Property Cisco Systems in San Jose, California, where he was responsible for all of the company’s patent prosecution, licensing, and litigation.  He started Cisco’s patent program in 1994 and built a portfolio of over 2000 issued patents and over 3000 pending patents.

Mr. Barr has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Political Science from MIT and a JD cum laude from Boston University School of Law. He was an Adjunct Professor of Patent Law at Hastings College of Law from 1994-1999.

In addition, Mr. Barr has been a prominent patent attorney in Silicon Valley for over 20 years. He started his patent practice at the law firm of Townsend and Townsend. He has also been a partner at Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison and Weil, Gotshal and Manges, where he specialized in patent strategy counseling for clients in the computer, telecommunications, and semiconductor industries.  He is currently of Counsel to the law firm of Gunderson, Dettmer, Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, LLP

Mr. Barr is a frequent speaker on patent law issues and patent reform. He testified twice at the Federal Trade Commission hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy.