Paul M. Saraceni, Chief IP Officer - Paul Saraceni joined RPX as Chief IP Officer in September 2008, bringing 15+ years of intellectual property law experience, from both the private practice and in-house counsel perspectives. Immediately prior to joining RPX, Mr. Saraceni was Vice President and Associate General Counsel, IP Strategy & Transactions, at Yahoo! Inc., where he developed and managed Yahoo!'s patent acquisition program, led and negotiated strategic IP deals, patent licensing transactions, and IP aspects of M&A deals and business and technology transactions. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Mr. Saraceni was Senior IP Counsel for the Technology & Manufacturing Group of Intel Corporation, responsible for leading that business unit's IP strategy and negotiations, including patent cross licenses and defense of patent assertions. Before moving in-house, he was a partner in the Silicon Valley IP boutique law firm of Derwin & Siegel, where his practice focused on patent transactions, due diligence, prosecution, and IP strategy for technology start-ups. Previously, Mr. Saraceni was a patent litigation attorney in the Silicon Valley office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where he represented high tech companies in patent infringement cases before U.S. Federal Courts and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Mr. Saraceni holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Bucknell University, an M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he was a Notes Editor of the North Carolina Law Review. He is a registered Patent Attorney before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, a member of the state bars of California and Texas, and a frequent speaker on the topics of IP strategy, negotiations, licensing and acquisitions. [top]
Adam C. Spiegel, Senior VP, Finance & Administration,
Interim Chief Financial Officer - Adam Spiegel brings over 20 years of strategic finance, consulting and operating experience to RPX. Mr. Spiegel spent over a decade as an investment banker advising a wide variety of technology, financial services and industrial companies. Working for Credit Suisse in San Francisco and Prudential Securities in New York, Mr. Spiegel completed mergers and acquisitions, public and private equity offerings, asset securitizations and other financial advisory assignments valued in excess of $8.5 billion. Mr. Spiegel also has significant operating experience, serving as Chief Operating Officer and/or Chief Financial Officer for early stage companies in the medical technology field. Mr. Spiegel started his career as a communications satellite systems engineer for Booz Allen & Hamilton. Mr. Spiegel holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Anderson School at UCLA. [top]
Henri Linde, VP, Memberships - Henri Linde brings over 20 years of experience in technology and patent licensing/acquisition. Prior to joining RPX, Mr. Linde was President Americas at Actimagine Corp, a video software development company. Prior to that Mr. Linde was Vice President, Intellectual Property & Licensing at the France-based Thomson for 12 years. Thomson serves as the exclusive licensing representative of mp3 patents and software of the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Mr. Linde was responsible for the Thomson licensing and business development programs, and played an instrumental role in helping make mp3 the de facto standard and the recognized leader in audio compression technology. Throughout his tenure with Thomson, Mr. Linde helped fuel mp3's rapid expansion through agreements with well over 500 companies across the Internet and dedicated player-recorder industries, without ever litigating the patents. Recognized for his experience and skills in marketing and negotiations, Mr. Linde also has an extensive background in banking, finance and pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Thomson, he worked for Pierre Fabre Médicament (Castres, France) and Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland (Rotterdam, Netherlands). [top]
Anderson R. Scott , VP, Business Development - Prior to joining RPX, Anderson R. Scott was a founder and Co-Managing Partner of Pluritas LLC, a leading patent brokerage and IP investment banking advisory firm. During his tenure at Pluritas, he helped complete over 35 patent assignment transactions for corporate, VC, and individual inventor clients. Prior to founding Pluritas, Mr. Scott was the Vice President of Investor Strategy at Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital investment bank. As the first employee of Garage, he was responsible for building Garage’s relationships with over 3,000 venture capital, corporate and individual investors. In addition, Mr. Scott was a key advisor to senior management teams of over 40 software, wireless, infrastructure and telecom startup companies, and helped raise over $150 million for these companies. Previously, Mr. Scott was a consultant for several Internet and software companies including Peapod, Macromedia, and Perceptual Robotics Inc. He was a Kauffman Foundation Intern at Evanston Business Investment Corp, a seed venture capital firm which invests in technology startups. Prior to business school, Mr. Scott was a Marketing Manager for a sports marketing firm in Hong Kong, and a General Manager at a food brokerage and distribution company in Seattle. He holds a B.A. from Northwestern University, and a M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. [top]
David Ruder, VP, Business Development - Prior to RPX David Ruder established Terrier IP Investments, LLC, a private investment firm focused on intellectual property-based investments in firms backed by hedge funds and private equity. He began his career working as an investment banker on Wall Street, helping companies in the consumer and entertainment sectors raise capital or engage in M&A transactions. He went on to practice intellectual property law for Kirkland & Ellis, working on M&A due diligence, patent licenses, and software development agreements. He has significant intellectual property transaction experience as co-founder and CEO of River West Brands LLC as well as positions in the M&A advisory practice of Ocean Tomo and patent investment firm Altitude Capital Partners. Mr. Ruder received his M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, his J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law, and his B.A. from Williams College. [top]
David Potts, VP, Business Development - David Potts brings almost 25 years of management consulting, software and business development experience to RPX. Prior to joining RPX Mr. Potts was owner and principal of Cascade10, LLC, providing strategic business planning and development services to clients in online automotive, financial services and real estate. Prior to starting Cascade10, he worked at The Cobalt Group overseeing business development and strategy, as well as sales and service to automotive OEMs and dealers including GM, Chrysler, Honda and Toyota. Mr. Potts managed the introduction of Cobalt's new products and led merger and acquisition activities including the Motorplace Auto Exchange transaction with GE Capital in 2001. Prior to Cobalt, Mr. Potts worked at 2Bridge Software in San Francisco where he oversaw product management and secured pilot clients including Goldman, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo. In 1992, he co-founded Ledge Multimedia, a software consulting business subsequently sold to Dataware Technologies in 1995. Mr. Potts was a management consultant for ATKearney/JSA where he led projects for European aerospace companies including Aerospatiale, Thomson CSF and URENCO. He started his career at General Electric. Mr. Potts has a B.A. in history from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. [top]
Eric Olsen, VP, Business Development & Legal - Prior to joining RPX, Eric Olsen was the Vice President of Business Development and Legal at Aggregate Knowledge, a company developing advertising optimization solutions for Internet advertisers and advertising agencies. Prior to Aggregate Knowledge, he worked at Intertrust Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ITRU, acquired by Sony and Philips) as Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing. In that capacity, he was part of a team that negotiated a successful patent litigation settlement with Microsoft for $440 million. In addition, Mr. Olsen negotiated successful patent license agreements with Fortune 500 companies, was responsible for standards based patent licensing initiatives, served as lead counsel on patent pooling arrangements and established multiple joint ventures to accelerate patent licensing programs. Prior to Intertrust, he was patent counsel for Cardeon Corporation, a medical device start-up company, and Zexel Innovation, a leader in the development of GPS navigational systems (acquired by Visteon Corporation NYSE:VC). Mr. Olsen has a B.S. in Biology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, a J.D. from Santa Clara University, is a registered Patent Attorney before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and a member of the state bar of California. [top]
Thomas Westerlund, VP, Structured Acquisitions - Prior to joining RPX, Thomas Westerlund worked at Nokia Corporation for 10 years. During his tenure at Nokia, he spent 7 years with Nokia's M&A department investigating and executing strategic acquisitions, divestments and joint ventures in various technology areas. Most recently, Mr. Westerlund spent 3 years with Nokia's Intellectual Property department establishing and heading Nokia's IP acquisition, divestment and investment practice. Prior to this, Mr. Westerlund served at Sonera Capital, the Mergers & Acquistions arm of Sonera, for 4 years. He has also served on the board of several European technology firms.
Mr. Westerlund holds a Masters degree in Economics from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. [top]
Kevin Barhydt, VP, Head of Acquisitions - Prior to joining RPX, Kevin Barhydt was the Vice President of Acquisitions at Intellectual Ventures (IV) where he oversaw the completion of hundreds of patent acquisitions and launched key strategic initiatives to advance the Acquisitions program. Earlier in his tenure at IV, Mr. Barhydt successfully designed and implemented the targeted patent acquisition program and developed processes and metrics to improve licensing operations. Before joining IV, Mr. Barhydt was a consultant at McKinsey & Company where he worked with senior client leadership primarily in the high-tech industry to complete projects in sales and marketing, capital allocation and performance management. Prior to business school, Mr. Barhydt held various sales and marketing leadership positions for smaller high-tech companies. Mr. Barhydt holds a B.A. from the University of Puget Sound and an MBA from Harvard Business School. [top]
Reza Mashouf, Director, Acquisitions -
Reza Mashouf joined RPX in April of 2008 as Director of Corporate Development focusing on patent acquisition and customer enrollment. Prior to RPX, Mr. Mashouf was a senior associate in JMP's Software Investment Banking group where he completed M&A and capital raising transactions with an aggregate value of over $1 billion. Prior to JMP, he was an Associate in Ocean Tomo's M&A Advisory group where he worked directly for the RPX founder, John Amster. At Ocean Tomo, Mr. Mashouf completed transactions with an aggregate value of approximately $40 million, including the sale of Commerce One. He has also previously worked in the investment banking groups at JPMorgan and ThinkEquity and has completed numerous advisory and capital raising transactions over his seven year banking career totaling over $7 billion in aggregate value. Mr. Mashouf received his B.S. from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. [top]
Steve Waterhouse, CTO - Prior to joining RPX, Steve Waterhouse was a founding partner in the boutique IP firm Pebble Partners which provides expert valuation and brokerage services to owners of Intellectual Property. Prior to founding Pebble Partners, Dr. Waterhouse was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Foundation Capital, where he focused on investments in consumer Internet and search including the investment in Powerset which was recently acquired by Microsoft. Prior to Foundation, Dr. Waterhouse was a Director at Sun Microsystems responsible for the Honeycomb storage product line which he managed from his initial invention to product release. He was also Director of Engineering for the JXTA project at Sun Microsystems following Sun's acquisition of Infrasearch where he was VP of Engineering. Dr. Waterhouse holds a Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A. from Cambridge University where he received the Isaac Newton prize for outstanding Ph.D. research. He specialized in speech recognition and data analytics during his Ph.D. He has published over 30 international research papers and is an author on 30 pending patents in speech, distributed systems, search and storage technology. [top]
Mike MacKay, CKO - Prior to joining RPX, Mike MacKay co-founded and consulted for several early stage start-up companies including Digisense, which pioneered a new class of embedded storage appliance for the SMB market that provided secure bulk offline storage using Amazon Web Services. Prior to Digisense, Mike was Executive VP at Intertrust where he was responsible for pool-based licensing initiatives and was a member of the team that negotiated successful settlement of patent litigation with Microsoft for $440 million. Earlier in his career with Intertrust, Mr. MacKay led research and development of the Rights|System product line for embedded, desktop and server Digital Rights Management systems. Before joining Intertrust, MacKay was Vice President of Corporate Architecture at Novell where he led design projects and standards strategy for the NetWare 5 product line. During his work at Novell, Mike was instrumental in the original design of the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), and was a leading early contributor to design of the IETF Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). Prior to joining Novell, MacKay worked for Taligent where he was responsible for class framework architecture, and spent 15 years at Xerox where he worked as Senior Architect for distributed printing services, development of structured document-processing systems, and printing systems and services products. Mike has two issued patents, and has been a contributor in multiple standards bodies including IETF, DMTF, and ISO, and is a former member of the board Directors for the Object Management Group. [top]
Paul M. Saraceni, Chief IP Officer - Paul Saraceni joined RPX as Chief IP Officer in September 2008, bringing 15+ years of intellectual property law experience, from both the private practice and in-house counsel perspectives. Immediately prior to joining RPX, Mr. Saraceni was Vice President and Associate General Counsel, IP Strategy & Transactions, at Yahoo! Inc., where he developed and managed Yahoo!'s patent acquisition program, led and negotiated strategic IP deals, patent licensing transactions, and IP aspects of M&A deals and business and technology transactions. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Mr. Saraceni was Senior IP Counsel for the Technology & Manufacturing Group of Intel Corporation, responsible for leading that business unit's IP strategy and negotiations, including patent cross licenses and defense of patent assertions. Before moving in-house, he was a partner in the Silicon Valley IP boutique law firm of Derwin & Siegel, where his practice focused on patent transactions, due diligence, prosecution, and IP strategy for technology start-ups. Previously, Mr. Saraceni was a patent litigation attorney in the Silicon Valley office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where he represented high tech companies in patent infringement cases before U.S. Federal Courts and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Mr. Saraceni holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Bucknell University, an M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he was a Notes Editor of the North Carolina Law Review. He is a registered Patent Attorney before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, a member of the state bars of California and Texas, and a frequent speaker on the topics of IP strategy, negotiations, licensing and acquisitions. 
Adam C. Spiegel, Senior VP, Finance & Administration,
Interim Chief Financial Officer - Adam Spiegel brings over 20 years of strategic finance, consulting and operating experience to RPX. Mr. Spiegel spent over a decade as an investment banker advising a wide variety of technology, financial services and industrial companies. Working for Credit Suisse in San Francisco and Prudential Securities in New York, Mr. Spiegel completed mergers and acquisitions, public and private equity offerings, asset securitizations and other financial advisory assignments valued in excess of $8.5 billion. Mr. Spiegel also has significant operating experience, serving as Chief Operating Officer and/or Chief Financial Officer for early stage companies in the medical technology field. Mr. Spiegel started his career as a communications satellite systems engineer for Booz Allen & Hamilton. Mr. Spiegel holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Anderson School at UCLA.
Henri Linde, VP, Memberships - Henri Linde brings over 20 years of experience in technology and patent licensing/acquisition. Prior to joining RPX, Mr. Linde was President Americas at Actimagine Corp, a video software development company. Prior to that Mr. Linde was Vice President, Intellectual Property & Licensing at the France-based Thomson for 12 years. Thomson serves as the exclusive licensing representative of mp3 patents and software of the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Mr. Linde was responsible for the Thomson licensing and business development programs, and played an instrumental role in helping make mp3 the de facto standard and the recognized leader in audio compression technology. Throughout his tenure with Thomson, Mr. Linde helped fuel mp3's rapid expansion through agreements with well over 500 companies across the Internet and dedicated player-recorder industries, without ever litigating the patents. Recognized for his experience and skills in marketing and negotiations, Mr. Linde also has an extensive background in banking, finance and pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Thomson, he worked for Pierre Fabre Médicament (Castres, France) and Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland (Rotterdam, Netherlands). 
Anderson R. Scott , VP, Business Development - Prior to joining RPX, Anderson R. Scott was a founder and Co-Managing Partner of Pluritas LLC, a leading patent brokerage and IP investment banking advisory firm. During his tenure at Pluritas, he helped complete over 35 patent assignment transactions for corporate, VC, and individual inventor clients. Prior to founding Pluritas, Mr. Scott was the Vice President of Investor Strategy at Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital investment bank. As the first employee of Garage, he was responsible for building Garage’s relationships with over 3,000 venture capital, corporate and individual investors. In addition, Mr. Scott was a key advisor to senior management teams of over 40 software, wireless, infrastructure and telecom startup companies, and helped raise over $150 million for these companies. Previously, Mr. Scott was a consultant for several Internet and software companies including Peapod, Macromedia, and Perceptual Robotics Inc. He was a Kauffman Foundation Intern at Evanston Business Investment Corp, a seed venture capital firm which invests in technology startups. Prior to business school, Mr. Scott was a Marketing Manager for a sports marketing firm in Hong Kong, and a General Manager at a food brokerage and distribution company in Seattle. He holds a B.A. from Northwestern University, and a M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
David Ruder, VP, Business Development - Prior to RPX David Ruder established Terrier IP Investments, LLC, a private investment firm focused on intellectual property-based investments in firms backed by hedge funds and private equity. He began his career working as an investment banker on Wall Street, helping companies in the consumer and entertainment sectors raise capital or engage in M&A transactions. He went on to practice intellectual property law for Kirkland & Ellis, working on M&A due diligence, patent licenses, and software development agreements. He has significant intellectual property transaction experience as co-founder and CEO of River West Brands LLC as well as positions in the M&A advisory practice of Ocean Tomo and patent investment firm Altitude Capital Partners. Mr. Ruder received his M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, his J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law, and his B.A. from Williams College. 
David Potts, VP, Business Development - David Potts brings almost 25 years of management consulting, software and business development experience to RPX. Prior to joining RPX Mr. Potts was owner and principal of Cascade10, LLC, providing strategic business planning and development services to clients in online automotive, financial services and real estate. Prior to starting Cascade10, he worked at The Cobalt Group overseeing business development and strategy, as well as sales and service to automotive OEMs and dealers including GM, Chrysler, Honda and Toyota. Mr. Potts managed the introduction of Cobalt's new products and led merger and acquisition activities including the Motorplace Auto Exchange transaction with GE Capital in 2001. Prior to Cobalt, Mr. Potts worked at 2Bridge Software in San Francisco where he oversaw product management and secured pilot clients including Goldman, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo. In 1992, he co-founded Ledge Multimedia, a software consulting business subsequently sold to Dataware Technologies in 1995. Mr. Potts was a management consultant for ATKearney/JSA where he led projects for European aerospace companies including Aerospatiale, Thomson CSF and URENCO. He started his career at General Electric. Mr. Potts has a B.A. in history from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. 
Eric Olsen, VP, Business Development & Legal - Prior to joining RPX, Eric Olsen was the Vice President of Business Development and Legal at Aggregate Knowledge, a company developing advertising optimization solutions for Internet advertisers and advertising agencies. Prior to Aggregate Knowledge, he worked at Intertrust Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ITRU, acquired by Sony and Philips) as Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing. In that capacity, he was part of a team that negotiated a successful patent litigation settlement with Microsoft for $440 million. In addition, Mr. Olsen negotiated successful patent license agreements with Fortune 500 companies, was responsible for standards based patent licensing initiatives, served as lead counsel on patent pooling arrangements and established multiple joint ventures to accelerate patent licensing programs. Prior to Intertrust, he was patent counsel for Cardeon Corporation, a medical device start-up company, and Zexel Innovation, a leader in the development of GPS navigational systems (acquired by Visteon Corporation NYSE:VC). Mr. Olsen has a B.S. in Biology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, a J.D. from Santa Clara University, is a registered Patent Attorney before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and a member of the state bar of California.
Thomas Westerlund, VP, Structured Acquisitions - Prior to joining RPX, Thomas Westerlund worked at Nokia Corporation for 10 years. During his tenure at Nokia, he spent 7 years with Nokia's M&A department investigating and executing strategic acquisitions, divestments and joint ventures in various technology areas. Most recently, Mr. Westerlund spent 3 years with Nokia's Intellectual Property department establishing and heading Nokia's IP acquisition, divestment and investment practice. Prior to this, Mr. Westerlund served at Sonera Capital, the Mergers & Acquistions arm of Sonera, for 4 years. He has also served on the board of several European technology firms.
Mr. Westerlund holds a Masters degree in Economics from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. 
Kevin Barhydt, VP, Head of Acquisitions - Prior to joining RPX, Kevin Barhydt was the Vice President of Acquisitions at Intellectual Ventures (IV) where he oversaw the completion of hundreds of patent acquisitions and launched key strategic initiatives to advance the Acquisitions program. Earlier in his tenure at IV, Mr. Barhydt successfully designed and implemented the targeted patent acquisition program and developed processes and metrics to improve licensing operations. Before joining IV, Mr. Barhydt was a consultant at McKinsey & Company where he worked with senior client leadership primarily in the high-tech industry to complete projects in sales and marketing, capital allocation and performance management. Prior to business school, Mr. Barhydt held various sales and marketing leadership positions for smaller high-tech companies. Mr. Barhydt holds a B.A. from the University of Puget Sound and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Reza Mashouf, Director, Acquisitions -
Reza Mashouf joined RPX in April of 2008 as Director of Corporate Development focusing on patent acquisition and customer enrollment. Prior to RPX, Mr. Mashouf was a senior associate in JMP's Software Investment Banking group where he completed M&A and capital raising transactions with an aggregate value of over $1 billion. Prior to JMP, he was an Associate in Ocean Tomo's M&A Advisory group where he worked directly for the RPX founder, John Amster. At Ocean Tomo, Mr. Mashouf completed transactions with an aggregate value of approximately $40 million, including the sale of Commerce One. He has also previously worked in the investment banking groups at JPMorgan and ThinkEquity and has completed numerous advisory and capital raising transactions over his seven year banking career totaling over $7 billion in aggregate value. Mr. Mashouf received his B.S. from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.
Steve Waterhouse, CTO - Prior to joining RPX, Steve Waterhouse was a founding partner in the boutique IP firm Pebble Partners which provides expert valuation and brokerage services to owners of Intellectual Property. Prior to founding Pebble Partners, Dr. Waterhouse was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Foundation Capital, where he focused on investments in consumer Internet and search including the investment in Powerset which was recently acquired by Microsoft. Prior to Foundation, Dr. Waterhouse was a Director at Sun Microsystems responsible for the Honeycomb storage product line which he managed from his initial invention to product release. He was also Director of Engineering for the JXTA project at Sun Microsystems following Sun's acquisition of Infrasearch where he was VP of Engineering. Dr. Waterhouse holds a Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A. from Cambridge University where he received the Isaac Newton prize for outstanding Ph.D. research. He specialized in speech recognition and data analytics during his Ph.D. He has published over 30 international research papers and is an author on 30 pending patents in speech, distributed systems, search and storage technology.
Mike MacKay, CKO - Prior to joining RPX, Mike MacKay co-founded and consulted for several early stage start-up companies including Digisense, which pioneered a new class of embedded storage appliance for the SMB market that provided secure bulk offline storage using Amazon Web Services. Prior to Digisense, Mike was Executive VP at Intertrust where he was responsible for pool-based licensing initiatives and was a member of the team that negotiated successful settlement of patent litigation with Microsoft for $440 million. Earlier in his career with Intertrust, Mr. MacKay led research and development of the Rights|System product line for embedded, desktop and server Digital Rights Management systems. Before joining Intertrust, MacKay was Vice President of Corporate Architecture at Novell where he led design projects and standards strategy for the NetWare 5 product line. During his work at Novell, Mike was instrumental in the original design of the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), and was a leading early contributor to design of the IETF Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). Prior to joining Novell, MacKay worked for Taligent where he was responsible for class framework architecture, and spent 15 years at Xerox where he worked as Senior Architect for distributed printing services, development of structured document-processing systems, and printing systems and services products. Mike has two issued patents, and has been a contributor in multiple standards bodies including IETF, DMTF, and ISO, and is a former member of the board Directors for the Object Management Group.