About Bryan
Bryan Butler earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Swarthmore College and later completed an MBA at the University of Chicago. He went on to law school at the University of San Diego School of Law, where he received his J.D. in 1993. The combination of technical, business and legal training shaped the early direction of his career.
After law school Butler began in private practice as an IP litigation lawyer at Pennie & Edmonds in 1993. He moved in-house at the turn of the millennium, joining 3Com in 2000 as director of IP licensing and litigation. That role put him at the intersection of product development and legal strategy, handling disputes and licensing deals for a networking company during a period of fast change in the industry.
Butler’s career at IBM spanned multiple technical groups and legal functions. In 2003 he worked as a senior lawyer for storage networking control plane software. He later served as site counsel for storage networks data plane software and hardware in 2007, and as IP counsel for IBM System Networking in 2010. In 2015 he took the title of counsel at IBM Research. The positions reflect steady movement into roles that combined legal work with deep technical subject matter.
He has written on patent law topics. In 2005 American Lawyer Media published his legal treatise on damages and remedies for patent infringement. The book focuses on how courts and practitioners approach monetary relief in patent disputes. In 2014 he also taught as an adjunct professor at Lincoln Law School of San Jose, bringing practical IP litigation and licensing experience into the classroom.
Throughout his career Butler has handled patent infringement matters, licensing negotiations and IP litigation strategy. His engineering background gives him familiarity with technical issues that often arise in disputes over networking and storage technologies. His MBA contributes an understanding of business and valuation questions that surface in damages analysis and settlement talks.
He joined IBM Research as counsel in 2015 and remains at IBM Corporation. He divides his time between advising on intellectual property strategy, licensing arrangements and patent damages issues. He currently practices as counsel at IBM Research, handling intellectual property, licensing and patent damages matters.
