spark360 Behind The Scenes: Friedman, Suder & Cooke

Jon Suder’s business card lists him as an attorney/partner in the Fort Worth law firm of Friedman, Suder & Cooke. But it became clear following our spark360 interview with him that he carries a secondary title: student of history.

Our interview quickly turned into a master’s class for me in intellectual property litigation, its role in the founding of our country and how it has impacted the march of technological progress. As a tech reporter for three major media outlets during my journalism career, I was already somewhat familiar with the latter category; I knew how jealously hardware and software companies guarded their secrets and how the coming of the internet had had its own effect on ideas, innovation, patents and IP protection. But I learned more about just how much founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin believed in intellectual property rights, and how that conviction worked its way into the United States Constitution.

After all, Jefferson and Franklin weren’t just architects of democracy: they were also inventors. Jefferson engineered designs for farm plows, devices for encrypting communications and furniture pieces, among other things. And you’ve no doubt heard of the Franklin stove.

You would expect Suder and law firm co-shareholder Mike Cooke to know their intellectual property litigation history. But they both have the gift of explaining complex property litigation concepts and defenses in easy-to-understand terms – again, something you could have guessed considering their jobs are to convince juries comprised of average citizens why a company believed its technology patents had been stolen by another entity.

What also comes through in their history lessons is their own belief in standing up for those IP rights when a company believes they’ve been violated. These issues can mean life or death for entrepreneurs and their struggling start-ups, and Suder and Cooke are convinced that by pursuing intellectual property litigation complaints, they’re not just addressing issues of justice – they’re also helping to stoke the engine of the U.S. economy, which has received a lot of its fuel over the past 100 years or so from the brainpower exhibited by some inventor or engineer in a cold, dark garage or a small, crowded dorm room.

Think Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Dell, Microsoft; history is full of such examples.

- Renay San Miguel