Wood IP

Archie is a member of the New York state bar. His specialties are software patentability and USPTO rules. Archie leverages his insights in these areas to counsel clients on successfully navigating the obstacles to software patentability created by the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), the Federal Circuit’s related decision in Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corporation, et al., and other related cases.

Archie is a retired Supervisory Patent Examiner (SPE), from the USPTO. There, he managed examinations of hundreds of software, communications, business methods, and other related computer and software inventions. In addition, Archie periodically helped draft new Rules Packages and MPEP revisions, as 35 USC 101 case law evolved, regarding software patentability.

In December 2018, Archie was selected by Majority Chief Counsel for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on IP, to participate in a closed-door working group of industry experts.  The task of the working group was to assist Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) revise Title 35 Section 101 of the U.S. Code on patent subject matter eligibility. Archie’s support to the IP Subcommittee is ongoing.

Archie’s computer art expertise includes both hardware and software inventions in areas such as: artificial intelligence, caching algorithms & hierarchical storage, decision theory, data analytics, statistical analysis, quantitative analysis, pipelining & instruction buffering, taxonomy discovery & artificial intelligence, multimedia databases, hashing algorithms, data structures, fuzzy searching, recursive queries, semantic networks, parsing and sorting algorithms, transactional file access, I/O channel fault detection/recovery, hot swapping & failover networks, microprocessor logic analysis using expert systems and neural networks, etc.

Archie was also a Special Laws Expert/Special Program Examiner (SPRE) at the USPTO. As such, he provided technical and legal counsel to PTO leadership, on post-grant proceedings and international patent filings. Moreover, he taught Patent Academy classes for examiners and SPEs, and helped draft new rules, legislation and MPEP updates for reexamination, reissue & PCT practice. He further served as an art expert, on Review Panels for Masters Level aspirants throughout the Electrical Cluster in plural arts, including: telephony and communications, computer architecture & applications, and software & programming arts.

Prior to his career at the USPTO, Archie was an experienced litigator. He practiced as an Asst. AG in a branch of the NY State Attorney General’s Office which pioneered use of  electronic evidence gathering using state of the art wireless digital surveillance equipment.  He was also a trial lawyer and Asst. DA in the Westchester County (NY) District Attorney’s Office.

Archie also has a considerable finance background, including working as a system and software engineer and project manager in the Finance Dept. of a Fortune 500 company (Eastern Air Lines). There, he developed and coded packages of software programs for econometric modeling. These included applications software for financial planning standards and evaluation.  Applications included: flexible budgeting, ROI analyses, inventory control, aircraft fleet fuel consumption studies, commodity hedging, merger & acquisition simulations, and computerization of audit controls and cost accounting tools.

Prior to that, as a computer systems design engineer at Sperry Rand Corp, Archie developed and coded unique Boolean logic reduction algorithms, for CPU switching arrays.  He also designed and coded packages of C.A.D. and simulation programs for modeling and testing new Naval battery fire control and missile guidance computers. Further, at Sperry, Archie designed and programmed digital logic arrays for both mainframe and special purpose computers used for applications such as:  traffic controllers, Lunar landing modules, and ship navigation.

Archie is a North Carolina native and a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he worked in electronic countermeasures.