- J.D., Harvard Law School
- B.A., University of Missouri
- Missouri
- American Bar Association, Intellectual Property Section, including roles as committee and subcommittee chairs on multiple occasions
Although located in the firm’s Kansas City Office, Ed has a national practice focused on intellectual property (“IP”), technology, trade regulation, and healthcare matters. His IP practice includes brand and trademark counseling, protection, and enforcement. Ed's technology-related practice encompasses technology development agreements and arrangements, E-commerce and Internet law matters, high-tech procurement negotiations and contracting, and product procurement and sourcing (especially sourcing in China). His trade regulation experience includes international and domestic (30 countries) distribution and franchising and complex domestic and cross-border competitor collaborations, including information sharing (within and without trade associations) and IP cross-licensing. Initially growing out of his franchising experience, Ed has developed a national reputation for legal matters affecting dentistry, including dental practice law compliance and reimbursement risks and issues.
Acting as a business partner with clients, Ed works alongside executives and boards of directors in formulating IP and product strategies, both offensive and defensive. He has helped structure national and international distribution systems, both franchised and non-franchised. In the field of dentistry, he has both freed unwitting dentists trapped in the grasps of questionable multi-practice enterprises and has assisted in structuring multiple location practices that comply with applicable dental practice laws.
Ed served on the ABA select Committee on the National Information Infrastructure and is the past Chair of the New Information Technologies Committee of the IPL Section of the ABA. He is presently the IPL Section’s Diversity Action Group Chair and, in addition, the IPL Section’s Liaison to the ABA’s Commission on Disability Rights. Ed was recently featured in the December 2018 issue of the ABA Journal. He has long been listed in The Best Lawyers in America©, has been named to the Super Lawyers® list, and has been recognized as an IP Star.
- Regularly counsels with clients concerning intellectual property policies and strategies, integrating business goals and product/service strategies.
- Counsels, protects and enforces intellectual property rights of all forms, including patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and mask works.
- Extensive experience in drafting and negotiating complex technology development and supply agreements involving multiple parties, including technologies as varied as genetically modified biological entities, HDD and SSD controller technology, robotic product delivery systems, and hydrostatic fluid power systems.
- Worldwide experience in drafting and managing franchise, distribution, and licensing systems, together with issues pertaining to counterfeit goods.
- Extensive work in representing both franchisors and franchisees as well as manufacturers, distributors, dealers and importers in all aspects of distribution-related legal matters, including international joint ventures, including in China.
- Pioneering developments in establishing and implementing complex competitor collaboration arrangements, including the well-known 20 Groups in the automotive industry, trade association antitrust policies, and even joint negotiating committees consisting of competitors.
- Developed systems for multiple dental practice locations that comply with widely varying dental practice laws.
-
The Best Lawyers in America ®, Intellectual Property Law; Copyright Law; Litigation-Intellectual Property; Technology Law; Trademark Law; listed for more than 20 years, including 2025
-
Super Lawyers®, 2011-2013