Harry Weiss, a U.S. Registered Las Vegas Patent Attorney, was the firm’s founder and was based in the firm’s Las Vegas, Nevada office until February of 2008. He passed away on April 19, 2008 from complications related to myelodysplasia. He had been practicing law since 1957. The members of the firm and his many clients mourn his passing.

Before becoming a Las Vegas attorney Mr. Weiss began his career as a patent aid for the Army Chemical Corps while in military service. He subsequently worked as a patent attorney for the Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Weiss then went on to serve as an in-house patent counsel for a number of major U.S. companies. He was an international patent attorney for Western Electric, where he worked on the international filing and prosecution of hundreds of Bell Lab patent applications. Mr. Weiss later joined IBM, where he became a Managing Patent Attorney. At IBM, Mr. Weiss had responsibility for securing patent protection for IBM’s semiconductor memory and logic devices, and also worked on cryogenic semiconductor technology and lasers. Mr. Weiss later served as the General Patent Attorney for Motorola in the Phoenix area, with overall patent responsibility for both the Semiconductor and Government Electronics groups. After a long career as corporate patent counsel, Mr. Weiss founded the Las Vegas, Nevada firm (then known as Harry M. Weiss & Associates, P.C.) in 1976.

Given his extensive in-house and private practice experience, Mr. Weiss handled a wide variety of patent, trademark and copyright prosecution, licensing and litigation matters. At IBM, he obtained several of the basic patents in the semiconductor area. At Motorola, Mr. Weiss established a successful licensing program that gave him extensive experience negotiating with major U.S., Japanese, French and German companies. At the firm he founded, Mr. Weiss continued to represent both U.S. and international high tech companies. Over the years, his clients included National Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, Supertex, FiTel Innovations, SGS Thompson, Microchip Technology Incorporated, VLSI, and others.

While Mr. Weiss had broad technical expertise (he filed patent applications on everything from nuclear reactors to children’s toys) he was particularly expert in the semiconductor area. At IBM, he obtained a patent on the first integrated semiconductor memory device using mirror imaging of memory cells — a design that is still in use today. During his years of practice, he also obtained patents regarding copper doped aluminum stripes to avoid aluminum electromigration, P2O5 passivation of semiconductor devices which prevents device failures as a result of exposure to external contaminants, oxide-nitride dielectric gate regions for the MOS technology, aluminum plus silicon for ohmic contacts to avoid undesired penetration of the contacts, DRAM refresh, use of partially defective semiconductor memory chips, one device N-channel MOS structures, CMOS structures and methods, creating permanent photographic images in silicon subtstrates, lead frame manufacture, and systems to protect reading information out of ROM’s.

Mr. Weiss was also the sole or co-inventor of six U.S. patents.