John Au

Dr. Au is a Senior Scientific Advisor with a Ph.D. in Applied Physics, focusing his practice on patent litigation in a wide range of technologies with particular emphasis on laser optical systems, telecommunications, nanotechnology, semiconductor fabrication and materials science. 

The depth and breadth of Dr. Au's technical background allows him to quickly understand and identify relevant technical issues related to any technology in the physical sciences and engineering in many patent disputes.

Dr. Au has more than six years' experience advising on intellectual property disputes related to a broad spectrum of technologies in consumer electronics, including semiconductor fabrication, digital cameras and camcorders, still image and video compression technologies, telecommunication and value-added applications in mobile handsets, liquid crystal display technology (LCDs), light emitting diode technology (LEDs), digital video recorders (DVRs), interactive television, GPS navigation systems, data compression and encoding for use on wireless networks, optical amplifiers and microprocessor hardware components.

In litigation matters, Dr. Au has worked on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants. His familiarity with both the technical and legal issues offers insight to lawyers on the litigation team, the clients’ engineering team and testifying experts in developing optimal litigation strategies, particularly regarding shaping clients’ claim construction, validity and infringement positions.

Dr. Au earned his doctorate in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology within the Physical Measurement and Control Group, where his research interests included the state-of-the-art design and fabrication of nanometer-scaled optical cavities for studying the interaction between a single atom with a single photon, as well as the implementation of a real-time adaptive optical phase measurement protocol whose precision surpassed the standard quantum limit. His work was multi-disciplinary in nature and involved an in-depth knowledge of a diverse array of technologies, including advanced computational algorithms, continuous wave and pulsed laser optical systems, wide-bandwidth real-time digital signal processing, RF signal processing, channel coding and source coding techniques for data communications, vacuum systems and the fabrication and characterization of semiconductor devices.

Dr. Au is not a lawyer.