Howard Skaist graduated Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and Tau Beta Pi from Princeton University in 1982 with a B.S.E.E. Degree in Electric Engineering and Computer Science. He entered Duke University in 1984, simultaneously pursuing a Master’s Degree in Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business and a Juris Doctorate Degree at Duke Law School. While at Duke, he served on the Editorial Board of the Duke Law Journal. He graduated with highest honors, Order of the Coif honors, and won the Willis Smith Award for being first in his law school class.

Immediately after graduating from Duke, he began clerking for Judge Eugene Wright on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle, WA. A year later, he entered private practice as a member of the Oregon bar, joining Stoel, Rives, a Pacific Northwest law firm headquartered in Portland. After spending two years in the Patent Group at Stoel, Mr. Skaist became an in-house patent attorney for General Electric Company at its Corporate Research and Development Center outside Albany, New York. Eventually, he joined AT&T’s Bell Laboratories as an intellectual property attorney, prior to the formation of Lucent Technologies. He returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1996 as a senior intellectual property attorney for Intel Corporation in Portland, OR, and in the ensuing seven years rose to become Intel’s Director of Patents, where he managed a staff of over 40, including patent attorneys, patent agents, paralegals, patent engineers, and administrative assistants. As Intel’s Director of Patents, Mr. Skaist split his time between developing the substantive legal strategy for several of Intel’s significant patent cases, leading several of Intel’s major patent cross-licensing efforts, overseeing other patent analysis projects, and leading the strategic management of Intel’s patent portfolio.

In 2003, Mr. Skaist left Intel and founded Berkeley Law & Technology Group, (BLTG) and was its managing partner until 2020. Mr. Skaist was also an adjunct professor at the Berkeley School of Law (formerly, Boalt Hall) in Berkeley, CA, Willamette School of Law in Salem, OR, Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, OR, and Albany Law School in Albany, NY, having taught courses in patent law, copyright law, and computer law. In addition, he is a member of the AIPLA, and the ABA, and served for several years (1998–2001) on the Editorial Board of the AIPLA Quarterly Journal.

Mr. Skaist has handled all aspects of patent law practice, including: patent preparation and prosecution, patent strategy, portfolio building and portfolio management, patent assertion and other patent license negotiation support, preparing patent opinion letters, and strategic oversight of patent litigation.