Timothy M. Murphy

Tim is a partner at Sunstein and is co-chair of its Patent Practice Group. He develops and carries out strategies for protecting key technologies. In achieving the business goals of clients, Tim has gained significant experience in devising strategies for patent portfolios that are to be involved in litigation or that will become the subject of licensing or an acquisition, as well as in handling patent interference and reexamination proceedings.

Experience

By working closely with clients to understand the clients' business goals and inventions, Tim has developed intellectual property portfolios that have provided significant value to the clients. Tim has worked with clients of all sizes, and he takes a special interest in protecting the intellectual property portfolios of our clients as they grow.
The technologies that Tim has handled are wide-ranging and include: mechanical and electromechanical devices, such as electric motors, scanners and plotters, printing press technology, IV delivery systems, blood-processing equipment, surgical instruments, diagnostic equipment, HVAC, and clean room systems; hardware and software inventions, such as image-processing systems, sound-processing systems, magnetic-resonance imaging, various types of tracking devices, remote-control devices, file servers, and web-based business methods; as well as a variety of pharmaceutical matters.
Tim has also worked with clients to help ensure their products do not infringe third-party patents. He has conducted numerous clearance studies where the third-party patent was determined to be invalid, or where the client's product was determined not to infringe the third-party patent.
In other situations, Tim has provided guidance to clients to successfully design around third-party patents. Tim also has a great deal of experience preparing clearance opinions, when necessary for protecting clients from charges of willful patent infringement.
Prior to joining Sunstein, he worked in New York and California in the legal department of a large, multinational computer manufacturer.

Professional and Community Involvement

Tim is currently on the Board of Editors of the Boston Bar Journal. He has previously been co-chair of the Boston Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section and has held other positions at the BBA. Tim has also lectured for, written for, and chaired programs at Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. relating to intellectual property.

Honors

In 2005, 2006 and 2007, Tim was named by the publishers of Law & Politics and Boston magazine a "Super Lawyer" in the field of intellectual property in Massachusetts, which is limited to the top 5 percent of attorneys in each state, as chosen by their peers and through independent research.
Tim completed a joint engineering/law program at Columbia University in 1985, obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering with honors from Tau Beta Pi, as well as a law degree.

Bar and Court Admissions

Tim is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New York, and California, and he is also a registered patent attorney.