T: 617-818-2692
tony@mielelawgroup.com
A lifetime of involvement in technology, artisanship, and the arts. In college, Tony majored in electrical engineering. Throughout high school and college, Tony also studied guitar and music theory with a private instructor. He also enjoyed drawing with pen, pencil, charcoal, and airbrush. While in college, he earned money creating designs for individuals and businesses, and produced murals and signs on fleet trucks, automobiles, and retail store windows.
Tony comes from a family with a rich history in and appreciation for the arts, artisanship, and technology. His uncle is an architect; his grandfather studied drawing and designed precision instruments for Gillette, and his great grandfather, an Italian immigrant, was a blacksmith, hobby winemaker, and inventor. His cousin attended Berklee College of Music with a full scholarship, and enjoys a profession where he performs in a wide range of venues playing tenor and baritone sax.
Tony spends his spare time with his family frequently attending a sporting event of one of his children. He also enjoys creative writing, and studying martial arts, including Kenpo, Kajukenbo, and Aikido.
Legal experience – corporate and employment law, intellectual property, and disputes. A former partner with a national law firm having offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, Silicon Valley, Washington, DC, and New York, Tony has been lead counsel on numerous matters in federal court as well as before the US Patent and Trademark Office. He has also managed and settled numerous disputed matters involving complex licensing and intellectual property issues.
Tony strongly believes that lawyers should actively participate in seminars and conferences to sharpen their advocacy skills, regardless of their experience. To this end, he remains active with a number of professional organizations including the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, the American Intellectual Property Association, and the Federal Circuit Bar Association.
Significant cases have included:
- In the 1990s, Tony litigated matters involving skis and Internet-related real estate software systems. Tony also led a team of over 15 lawyers in order to counter a competitive threat of one of his clients. The client’s extensive patent portfolio was evaluated, and upon identifying several patents being infringed, an action was filed in Delaware. The case was successfully settled before trial.
- Shortly after founding Miele Law Group, Tony filed a patent suit in the U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts on behalf of one of the firm’s medical device clients. Before incurring the costs of discovery, Tony successfully convinced opposing counsel to mediate the case with an independent technology mediator. The case was successfully settled, at a substantial cost savings, and the defendant agreed to pay a royalty for their use of the patented technology.
- Tony has since served as lead counsel in numerous patent, trademark, and trade dress matters. Tony handles matters both asserting patents and defending against accusations of patent infringement.
Technology familiarity. Over the years, Tony has become adept at understanding and working with a wide variety of technologies, including: material science; recreational vehicles; aeronautics; electronics; optics; medical devices; computer software and hardware; document processing technology; machine vision; wireless technologies; and embedded technologies.
Business experience. His business experience is diverse. He has helped lead large and small/startup organizations, and he has also started his own small businesses. Starting and running new businesses is another area where one finds a strong tradition in Tony’s family. His father and brother have each successfully started, grown, and run several small businesses. In the early 1990s, Tony helped establish and manage Weinstein & Miele, a Washington, DC area intellectual property law firm. He later served as Vice President and General Counsel of an enterprise resource planning software company.
In various settings, Tony was exposed to cash management, marketing, sales, operations, product design, team selection and leadership, and execution of revenue and profit plans.
Negotiations and deals. Tony has led negotiations in legal disputes, and in a wide range of business deals.
Books, papers. Tony has authored two business books concerning patent strategy (including Patent Strategy, Wiley & Sons, Inc., Copyright 2000), and numerous published papers and articles about varied intellectual property issues.
Tony received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Western New England College in 1987, and his Juris Doctor degree from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1993. He started his legal career as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, DC from 1987 to 1989. He was then admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1990, and to the Virginia State Bar in 1993. Tony is not admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.