Eli M. Sheets

Elijah M. Sheets is a member of the firm’s Intellectual Property Department and Patent Practice Group. With more than ten years of experience as an attorney and entrepreneur, Eli focuses his practice on matters involving patent application drafting and prosecution, patent assertion and defense, opinions, IPRs, and portfolio management strategies in a wide variety of technologies, including wireless communications, software, medical devices, computer hardware, and business methods. Eli also has significant experience assisting clients with trademark, copyright, and trade secret needs.

Eli has helped many clients secure patent rights over proprietary advanced wireless communication technologies, several of which have been written into or are currently being written into worldwide communication standards. He has written more than 500 patent applications for inventions in the wireless communications field and has prosecuted even more.

Before practicing IP law, Eli studied electrical engineering and began his professional career as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After gaining valuable experience as a patent examiner, Eli earned a Juris Doctor with honors and an IP focus from the University of New Hampshire School of Law (Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property).

At UNH, Eli served as the Editor-in-Chief of IDEA: The IP Law Review, one or the world's preeminent IP law publications and clerked for federal judges at the trial court (N.D. Illinois, Hon. J. Guzman) and appeals court (1st Circuit, Hon. C.J. Howard) levels. After graduation, Eli began private legal practice at a large general practice firm in Washington, D.C.

Eli is also the CEO of a legal tech start up that leverages time-stamping functionality of the Bitcoin distributed network to defensively protect all forms of intangible corporate assets against market competitors quickly and economically. He has become a recognized authority on issues surrounding the patentability of blockchain-based inventions and regularly advises businesses (from new ventures to established Fortune-100 corporations and from a cross-section of market sectors) regarding IP issues that may be relevant to their particular implementations of distributed ledger technology.