Industry: Legal Services

Additional Information

Our firm, Elman Technology Law, P.C., serves the legal needs of clients in intellectual property and Internet-related business matters. We believe that our extensive experience in patent, trademark and other aspects of the law related to technology enables us to provide clients with the educated guidance needed to develop an innovation from concept stage through realization in the marketplace. As a pioneer in cyberspace, we assist clients desiring to conduct business via the Internet.

Gerry Elman holds a B.S. from the University of Chicago, and an M.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University, in addition to his J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law. He has also completed business management, foreign language and additional law courses at Temple University, where he subsequently developed and taught a course for lawyers in computer law.

With 40 years of varied experience as a practicing attorney, he is also a widely published author on technology and the law. He was a pioneer in developing a legal practice relating to biotechnology, as well as one of the first attorneys to work with computers and online information technology. He has been accorded the highest rating, AV, in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory and actively participates in a roundtable of Vistage Trusted Advisors.

After law school and working in a New York City patent law firm, for four years Gerry practiced as an in-house patent attorney for Rohm and Haas Company, a multinational chemical company. Then, as a Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, he conducted litigation on behalf of the Commonwealth, primarily involving antitrust or utility regulation. Later, as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, he participated in civil and criminal investigations and complex litigation, including a trial of five pharmaceutical companies accused of fraud on the U.S. Patent Office.

He returned to private practice in 1982. At the beginning of that year, Gerry founded the legal journal Biotechnology Law Report along with publisher Mary Ann Liebert. Since then he has continuously served as its editor-in-chief. He has forged an alliance with the California Western School of Law in San Diego, where Professor Robert Bohrer and a team of his law students edit and contribute scholarly articles for the journal.

Since the early days of 1982, Gerry has been an avid advocate of computer-mediated communication, which has now become commonplace on the Internet. Via computer, he has taught intellectual property management on the University of Phoenix online campus. He has been an active member of the Global CyberLaw Network and the International Technology Law Association. From 1994 to 1999 he served as the sysop for intellectual property/legal matters in the Ideas, Inventions & Innovations Forum, on CompuServe.

Gerry also serves on the advisory board of The Licensing Journal. While on the advisory board of the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, he mentored a student at Santa Clara Law School writing an article on quarantine law that was published in the Spring 2002 issue of the Journal. He has been an advisor on biotechnology monographs for the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) and a member of the editorial boards of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and The Trademark Reporter. He co-authored a chapter on trademark law for L.J. Kutten's law treatise, COMPUTER SOFTWARE: PROTECTION/LIABILITY/LAW/FORMS.

As an active member of the Licensing Executives Society, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the DelCo IP Forum, Gerry helps clients to gain the maximum value through licensing and enforcing their intellectual property rights. He has arbitrated multi-million-dollar disputes for the American Arbitration Association, has served as an expert witness in patent law, and has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation over intellectual property rights. In one such case, he successfully defended the Seven-Up Company against an accusation of copyright infringement that involved a poster featuring a depiction of Santa Claus, 1990 U.S. Dist. Lexis 5203 (E.D. Pa.), appeal dismissed 919 F.2d 730 (3d Cir.).

Gerry is a charter member of the Benjamin Franklin American Inn of Court, composed of intellectual property practitioners in Greater Philadelphia. As one of the members at the "master" level of experience, he acts as a resource to help train others. He served for two years as its webmaster and on its Board of Governors.

Gerry chaired the Patent Legislation/Patent and Trademark Office Coordination Committee of the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association from 2003 to 2006, during a time of sweeping changes in regulations and the prospect of “patent reform” on the lips of Congress.

Gerry is profiled in various biographical references, including each edition of WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA since 1988.