Steven M. Koehler

Patent & Trademark Attorney, Shareholder

Contact Info

Steven M. Koehler is one of the founding members of the firm, which began in 1993. He is a former electrical engineer with Xcel Energy (formally Northern States Power) before becoming an attorney. Steve has over 30 years of experience as a patent and trademark attorney representing clients in diverse technology areas including computer hardware and software, robotic devices and systems, mechanical testing equipment, internal combustion engines and other automotive systems, speech recognition, control systems, hydraulic devices and other mechanical and electrical devices.

Bar Admissions

United States Patent and Trademark Office
Minnesota State Bar
U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
U.S. Supreme Court

Education

William Mitchell College of Law, JD (1992)
University of Minnesota, B.S. Electrical Engineering (1987)

Professional Affiliations

Member, American Intellectual Property Law Association
Member, Minnesota Intellectual Property Law Association
Member Minnesota State Bar Association

Areas of Practice

Patents
Design Patents
Trademarks
Licensing
Joint Development Agreements
Portfolio Analysis
Freedom to Operate
Validity/Non-Infringement
PCT National Phase Filings in the U.S.
Paris Convention Filing in the U.S.
Due Diligence Studies
Domestic and International Patent Portfolio Management and Strategy
Post-Grant Proceedings

Areas of Technical Expertise

Controllers/ Control Systems
Physical Testing Systems
Virtual Testing Systems
Telecommunications
Mobile Devices
Speech Recognition
Computer Hardware/Software
Signal Processing
Mechanical Devices
Hydraulic Systems
Robotic Systems
Exercise Equipment
Fluid Transfer Equipment
Laminate Board Systems
Building Systems
Load Cells
Packaging Equipment
Product Distribution Systems
Wind Turbines

Industry Experience

Xcel Energy (Formally Northern States Power), Minneapolis, Minnesota
Electrical Engineer (Dec, 1987 – March, 1990)

Exemplary Patents

US 8,695,958 Flexible fixture
US 8,607,626 Restraint system for restraining a test article in a selected vertical position relative to a movable belt
US D691,522 Storage locker
US D691,501 Housing for a material testing machine
US 8,485,048 Torque transfer coupling
US 8,453,522 Wind turbine drive train test assembly
US 8,322,233 Self-flushing bottle in-line fluid sampler
US 8,316,786 Lift system for an elevatorUS 7,624,111 Active content trust model
US 8,301,436 Semantic object synchronous understanding for highly interactive interface
US 8,275,605 Machine language translation with transfer mappings having varying context
US 8,266,586 Application development with unified programming models
US 8,186,207 Strut assembly for transfering load from a movable belt
US 8,185,376 Identifying language origin of words
US 8,169,179 Open-ended control circuit for electrical apparatus
US 8,165,870 Classification filter for processing data for creating a language model
US 8,127,037 System and method for listening to teams in a race event
US 8,107,642 Spatial noise suppression for a microphone array
US 8,065,146 Detecting an answering machine using speech recognition
US D646,233 Electric rotatable switch
US 7,998,033 Locking mechanism for a bicycle trainer
US 7,975,397 Multiple degree of freedom displacement transducer
US 7,965,795 Prevention of integrator wind-up in PI type controllers
US 7,918,143 Platform balance
US 7,908,916 Flat belt roadway simulator with steer and/or camber adjustment and method for ascertaining rolling loss
US D632,870 Glove cuff
US 7,890,325 Subword unit posterior probability for measuring confidence
US 7,873,903 Method for entering text
US 7,856,350 Reranking QA answers using language modeling
US 7,853,453 Analyzing dialog between a user and an interactive application
US 7,848,917 Common word graph based multimodal input
US 7,846,012 Apparatus and method for stunning poultry
US 7,814,341 Power supplys
US 7,802,939 High axial stiffness swivel joint
US 7,788,984 Platform balance
US 7,739,919 Test specimen holder
US 7,734,459 Automatic extraction of transfer mappings from bilingual corporations