François deVilliers is a registered patent attorney and is a Principal at Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner. He has broad intellectual property and technology experience, both in-house and at major law firms. In addition to IP portfolio development and management, he has dealt with incoming and outgoing patent assertions, negotiated complex technology and settlement agreements, written invalidity and non-infringement opinions and reviewed patent portfolios for acquisition or avoidance. His technical experience extends to wired and wireless telecommunications, RF transmission protocols, audio signal processing, computer hardware, software and networking, cloud computing, medical devices, audio and video compression, semiconductor fabrication and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Prior to joining Schwegman, François was Chief IP Counsel at Plantronics. Before entering the patent profession, François worked as an engineer in the inertial navigation field.