Fletcher Yoder

Billy graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in mathematics. Upon graduation he worked for a consulting engineering firm in Houston, specializing in the design of power distribution and control systems for industrial facilities, giving him in depth exposure to a wide variety of electrical technologies. While working as an engineer, Billy attended South Texas College of Law, where he was an assistant articles editor for The South Texas Law Review. Billy earned his doctor of jurisprudence degree, cum laude, in 1999.

Upon graduating from law school, Billy joined the intellectual property firm Arnold, White & Durkee, where he worked primarily on transactional intellectual property matters, including patent application preparation and prosecution, infringement and validity analysis and opinion preparation, and intellectual property due diligence for mergers and acquisitions. In 2003, Billy joined Wong, Cabello, Lutsch, Rutherford & Brucculeri as an associate, becoming a partner in 2007. At Wong Cabello, Billy continued to focus on transactional intellectual property matters, adding licensing and enforcement to his repertoire, including drafting license agreements as well as representing clients in licensing negotiations, ex parte and inter partes proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and district court litigation. While at Wong Cabello, Billy also acted as virtual in-house counsel for one of the firm’s principal clients. In 2015 (after Wong Cabello’s merger with Blank Rome, LLP) Billy briefly left private practice to become in-house intellectual property counsel for one of his long time clients. Subsequently, Billy returned to private practice as a solo practitioner also acting as Of Counsel to Blank Rome. Billy joined Fletcher Yoder in 2021.

Billy’s engineering and legal experiences have given him detailed exposure to numerous technologies, including power electronics; audio and video signal processing and compression; communication and networking technologies; oilfield technologies including completions tools, wireline logging tools, measuring/logging while drilling equipment; etc. Additionally, Billy has worked as both outside and in house counsel, giving him a deep understanding of how to use intellectual property rights to advance clients’ business objectives while remaining within a budget.

Billy is admitted to practice in Texas, before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and before various federal courts including the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.