Washington, D.C. intellectual property lawyer Derek Meeker talks about his professional experience. He shares that he began his career as an electrical engineer, spending about seven years in the field, primarily working on high-speed optical telecommunications systems — high-speed for their time, as he likes to note. He holds a few patents in that area, reflecting both his technical expertise and his natural curiosity about how things work. Even then, technology was more than a profession for him; it was a personal passion.

Outside of work, he built a free-space optical communication system to create an Ethernet link between his home and a friend’s house — long before cable modems and DSL, when dial-up was still the norm. He also wrote a packet filter for IPX networking, set up a video conferencing server, and even built a Stirling engine. That same curiosity, he explains, aligns perfectly with his work as a patent attorney, where he’s constantly exposed to new technologies and ideas.

He has a talent for quickly grasping unfamiliar concepts and engaging inventors in meaningful discussions — even sharing a laugh or two with them — while also being able to clearly explain technical details to examiners and hold his own against opposing expert witnesses, often eliciting key admissions.

Over the course of his legal career, he has worked with a wide range of technologies, including semiconductor devices, computer networks, processors, acoustic systems, X-ray devices, engine control systems, and turbochargers. He began in patent prosecution, spending about six or seven years refining his skills before transitioning to post-grant work roughly eight years ago. Since then, he has increasingly focused on inter partes reviews (IPRs), post-grant reviews (PGRs), and occasional re-examinations, combining his engineering foundation with legal precision to deliver strong results for his clients.