Lutton leaving Apple

Reuters reported: Richard "Chip" Lutton Jr., who manages Apple's patent portfolio, recently hit his 10-year mark at the company and decided it was time to try something else, according to a source familiar with Lutton's thinking.

Lutton has a JD from Columbia, class of 1993. was an Assistant General Counsel for Intellectual Property at Sun Microsystems, Inc., and an attorney at Arnold, White & Durkee (now Howrey Simon Arnold & White) in its Menlo Park, California and Houston, and clerked for Judge Rader at the CAFC.


Lutton was mentioned in the Patently-O post titled Where is the Next Federal Circuit Judge?. So was Kathleen O'Malley (N.D.Ohio, appointed thereto by Clinton), who was nominated for the CAFC position by Obama.

BJ Watrous appears in line to replace Lutton. Watrous obtained his JD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000 and his BA from Pomona College in 1993.

**An article in PCMag noted Apple received a patent on the iPhone's capacitive touch screen ( 7,966,578) which some lawyers found to be dangerously broad. An expert cited was Florian Mueller, "an award-winning intellectual property activist. " Wikipedia notes of Muller: Florian Müller (born January 21, 1970 in Augsburg, Germany) is a lobbyist, author, entrepreneur, consultant, and the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign. He is a high school graduate who attended Karlsgymnasium Pasing.[1] He blogs frequently about patent issues and gives legal advice.[2]