Sommerfeld, Donald D.

Mr. Solomon is chair of the firm's Intellectual Property Practice Group.  He is a registered patent attorney and certified mediator with substantial oversight and management responsibilities over more than 25 years of preparing and prosecuting patent and trademark applications, client counseling, licensing, negotiating, and litigating.  He also is an adjunct faculty member at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and currently teaches a course on trademark practice. 

Mr. Solomon was selected as a "Super Lawyer" in 2005, the very first year "Super Lawyers" were named in Missouri.  Being a "Super Lawyer" is an honor based on peer recognition and professional achievement granted to only five percent of the lawyers in the state.  In addition, Mr. Solomon has been chosen as one of the "Best Lawyers in America" in Intellectual Property.  Best Lawyers® is the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession and compiles lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers.

Mr. Solomon earned his J.D. degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, which U.S. News and World Report recently ranked among the top five U.S. law schools for patent law, and his Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, currently ranked by U.S. News and World Report in the top ten undergraduate chemical engineering departments in the nation and, by the metrics commonly employed at the time of his attendance, as the top chemical engineering department in the country.

Mr. Solomon joined us from a large national law firm headquartered in St. Louis, MO, where he was senior partner in the chemical arts, with responsibilities including management, oversight, development and training of attorneys and paralegals in an intellectual property department of about forty attorneys, and department head of professional liability responsible for compliance with ethical obligations, maintenance of professional standards and avoidance of liability, including policy development and implementation and management and oversight of sophisticated docketing procedures and software. 

Mr. Solomon's expertise includes drafting and prosecuting a wide range of intellectual property agreements, and preparing patentability, validity and infringement opinions on behalf of clients.  He has prepared and prosecuted hundreds of patent applications on behalf of several Fortune 1,000 companies and pre-eminent universities.

Over the last 15 years, Mr. Solomon's practice has focused primarily on managing large, international intellectual property portfolios, from obtaining and securing rights through the preparation and prosecution of patent and trademark applications, to protecting such rights pro-actively through client counseling, policing, licensing, negotiating and litigating.  In managing such portfolios, he coordinates client's intellectual property rights by developing sophisticated strategies aimed at comprehensive coverage of clients' rights in view of their business needs and goals.  Mr. Solomon has managed entire international intellectual property portfolios, each comprising hundreds to well over one thousand patents and trademarks, for: Converse Inc., Broyhill Furniture Industries, Inc., Petrolite Corp., and Astaris LLC (a joint venture of Solutia Inc. and FMC Corporation) and, at all times throughout the last 15+ years, he has served as lead or coordinating attorney in dozens of concurrent litigation matters pending throughout the world, including trademark oppositions and cancellation proceedings, as well as patent and trademark infringement lawsuits.

He has substantial practice area experience in many industry sectors and technologies including those involving the chemical arts and the mechanical arts.  He has prepared and prosecuted applications for products and processes in biochemical and pharmaceutical technologies, petroleum industry technologies and industrial chemistry, among other areas.

In 1992, Mr. Solomon received the President's Award of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis.  On a pro bono basis, Mr. Solomon has chaired or co-chaired several committees on behalf of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, and also served as President of the American Jewish Congress, West Central Region, among other professional and community activities.