Meador & Engle is a California law firm that specializes in the business issues faced by growing companies and creative entrepreneurs.

 

The firm also offers expertise in international business operations, with a special focus on Asia.

 

Business thinking. Outside of the box.

 

 

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Ross Meador

 

Ross D. Meador is an international business and technology attorney with broad experience representing American, Asian and European companies and investors in their domestic and cross-border business operations. He practiced law for fifteen years with leading international law firms, including Morrison & Foerster, Howard Rice et al., and most recently as a partner with Preston Gates & Ellis. For much of that time, he was seconded to firms in foreign countries, including six years with Kim & Chang in Seoul, Korea and two years with SSEK in Jakarta, Indonesia. During a sabatical from law practice, he and Jinsoo Terry founded Advanced Global Connections, LLC, which provides executive training to LG Corporation and other Asian businesses that operate in the US.

 

Ross's international career began in Vietnam in 1974 when he went alone to Saigon to open a new office for a child welfare organization called Friends of Children of Viet Nam. Since then, he has traveled in nearly 50 countries on six continents.

 

Mr. Meador graduated from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in 1986, where he served as Executive Editor of the International Tax & Business Lawyer law review.  He then joined the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster. In 1989, he moved to Seoul, Korea, on assignment as Foreign Legal Advisor to Kim & Chang, the largest law firm in Northeast Asia. While in Korea, Mr. Meador represented a wide variety of large multinational corporations in their Korean corporate affairs. Mr. Meador was also active in intellectual property and anti-piracy matters. He was active in the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea and was elected Chairman of the Chamber's Legal Services Committee.

 

In 1995, Mr. Meador moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where he was seconded as Foreign Legal Advisor to the law firm of Soewito, Suhardiman, Eddymurthy & Kardono. In Indonesia , he continued his diverse cross-border investment practice representing companies such as Daewoo, General Electric, Itochu, Landis & Gyr, Marriott, Oracle, Ritz-Carlton, Rolls Royce International, Siemens Telecommunications, and SsangYong Engineering and Construction.

 

Mr. Meador returned to Morrison & Foerster's San Francisco office in late 1997 as Of Counsel to the firm's Finance, Energy and Development Group. In this capacity, he continued to focus on out-bound investments involving multijurisdictional issues in numerous legal systems. Major clients included Enron Corporation in the acquisition of a large water system in Argentina. His article entitled “Project Financing of Water and Wastewater Projects” was published by the Japan Institute for Overseas Investment.

 

Mr. Meador left Morrison & Foerster in 1999 to serve as legal counsel to Panacom Corporation in the $10 billion acquisition of Korea Life insurance Company. In May 2000, Mr. Meador joined the Emerging Companies & Venture Capital practice group at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin and in 2001 joined Preston Gates & Ellis as a partner in the Business Department.

 

When Mr. Meador is not working directly with clients, he is active in promoting and facilitating international business. In January 2000, Mr. Meador was elected President of the Korean American Chamber of Commerce. He has been active with the Washington D.C.-based Vietnam Resources Group and in 2005 was elected Vice Chair of the US Vietnam Chamber of Commerce. He has been invited by the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and Industry to provide training to Vietnamese executives on American business practices, and has led business delegations both to and from Vietnam. He also serves as liaison between the Ho Chi Minh Bar Association and the International Law Section of the California Bar Association, and works with the San Francisco-HCMC Sister City Committee. He is currently a partner in Vietnam Capital Partners, a Vietnam-focused investment fund.

 

Mr. Meador is active in the California Bar Association. He was elected Secretary of the Executive Committee of the International Law Section and currently serves as Advisor Emeritus to the Section. As a public speaker, he has addressed the State Bar on issues such as International Mergers and Acquisitions, International Ventures for the Old and New Economies, the Korean Response to the Asian Financial Crisis, and multiple programs on investing in Vietnam. He has also been invited to speak at many other venues including the Haas School of Business and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

 

For a list of Ross Meador's representative transactions, click here.

 

 

Alan Engle

 

 

Alan Engle's practice is focused on litigation and intellectual property procurement and strategy. He is a member of the USPTO patent bar and is a 2002 graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. At Boalt, Alan focused on intellectual property law and was an editor of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. He also served as a judicial extern for Hon. D. Lowell Jensen of the Northern District of California and participated in Lefkowitz trademark moot court competition. Alan is currently an article editor for New Matter, the intellectual property law journal of the California Bar Association.

Prior to establishing Meador & Engle, Alan represented leading technology companies at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Alston & Bird, both large national law firms. Alan handled litigation matters involving patent infringement, trade secret misappropriation, trademark infringement, breach of intellectual property license agreements, copyright infringement, and contract disputes. Alan is also experienced with general litigation matters, including unfair competition, antitrust, malicious prosecution, free speech rights, and other claims.

Alan is distinguished by his ability to bring technical expertise to bear on legal problems. He is a member of the patent bar and earned his undergraduate degree, cum laude, at UC San Diego, where he completed a double major in philosophy and cognitive science and a minor in chemistry. He did graduate work in the history and philosophy of science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and at the University of Pittsburgh.

Alan has applied his legal and technical skills in a variety of significant cases, including:

 

Representing Applied Materials against ASM in a patent case involving remote plasma cleaning of semiconductor deposition chambers.
Representing Applied Biosystems against Beckman Coulter in a patent and licensing case involving gel electrophoresis for DNA sequencing and hardware for PCR chemistry.
Representing Micron Technology against Rambus in a patent and antitrust case based on Rambus’ lack of disclosure of relevant IP to JEDEC during DRAM standard setting.
Representing Solar Turbines against Wood Group in a case involving misappropriation of turbine-related trade secrets.
Representing Monster Cable against numerous parties in patent, trademark, and copyright matters.
Multiple federal actions involving copyright disputes related to video games.
Alan has also worked on behalf of Microsoft, DirecTV, and other corporations in litigation and counseling matters.


In addition to litigation, Alan does patent and trademark prosecution and advises on IP strategy. His litigation experience informs his efforts in filing, prosecuting, and licensing patents and trademarks. He knows how IP rights are asserted and defended in the real world and is focused on his client's strategic objectives and not simply technical aspects of procuring IP rights. He has seen many patent and TM applications from "Big Firms" that cost a lot but do not advance the ball with respect to a client's ultimate goals.

 

Alan also handles various estates & trusts matters, including wills and trusts, conservatorships, and probate on a case by case basis.

 

Above all, Alan seeks to provide his clients large firm sophistication with the personal commitment and value orientation characteristic of smaller firms.

 

Firm History

 

The roots of the firm can be traced back to Rogers & Meador. Paul Rogers and Ross Meador met in 1983 during their first year of law school at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall. They quickly became friends and joined forces for the Boalt Hall Moot Court Competition. They annihilated the competition and received both the Best Brief and Best Oral Argument awards. Years later, Ross accepted Paul's invitation to join Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, where Paul was Director. The two eventually moved their practice to Preston Gates & Ellis, where they served as partners before deciding to strike out on their own. Paul's first partner was Bob Roden, who left to serve as Associate General Counsel at Pixar Studios. Later, Ross and Paul were joined by Paul's wife Julie and former Howard Rice Director, Howard Lasky. Paul and Julie passed away in January 2006, and with their loss, Howard decided to go back to the big firm life at Coblentz, Patch Duffy & Bass. In 2009, Ross relocated to Southern California where he was joined by Alan Engle and the new firm of Meador & Engle was established.