About Cliff
Cliff Kuehn studied political science at the University of California, Irvine, earning a B.A. in 2006. He went on to the University of San Francisco School of Law, completing his J.D. in 2010. He later pursued international studies and received an LL.M. in European Intellectual Property Law from Stockholm University in 2015.
Kuehn entered legal practice soon after law school. He worked as an employment law clerk in 2009 before opening a small practice in 2010 under his own name. In 2012 he took a position at the European Union Intellectual Property Office, serving as an intellectual property lawyer and business analyst. That experience placed him in the administrative and policy side of IP work and exposed him to cross-border trademark systems.
Beginning in 2015 Kuehn moved into in-house and firm roles that centered on trademarks, copyrights and data privacy. He served as trademark and data privacy counsel at Kanbury in 2015 and returned to that firm in a similar capacity in 2021. In 2019 he worked as a trademark and copyright lawyer at Dergosits & Noah LLP. Alongside practice, he joined the faculty at his alma mater as an adjunct professor of law in 2018, teaching courses related to his practice areas.
His career reflects both private practice and institutional work. Time at the EUIPO put him in contact with European jurisprudence and procedures. Work at boutique firms and in-house roles exposed him to client counseling, clearance, enforcement and privacy compliance matters. He has handled trademark prosecution and disputes, advised on copyright questions, and consulted on data protection issues in commercial settings.
Since 2022 Kuehn has served as senior counsel at Pirkey Barber PLLC. He is licensed to practice in California and maintains a practice that crosses domestic and international IP concerns. He combines litigation-adjacent work with transactional counseling, and often draws on his European studies when issues involve cross-border intellectual property or privacy law.
He currently practices intellectual property law, handling trademarks, copyrights and data privacy matters at Pirkey Barber PLLC.
