Neal E. Abrams
Registered Patent Attorney
Neal was born and raised in York, PA. He attended the University of South Carolina on a U.S. Navy ROTC scholarship, and was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1959 and commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy. Neal was very active in the college community and was named to Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. He served on active duty for three and a half years, followed by four years in the Naval Reserve. During his service in the Navy Neal was exposed to many areas of developing technology, and it was then that he decided to attend law school and become an intellectual property lawyer.
After leaving active duty in the Navy in 1962, Neal became a Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where he was assigned to work in the emerging field of vehicle engine exhaust systems and emission controls, little knowing how the important this field later would become. He also began his law studies by enrolling in the evening program at American University in Washington, DC. Then began four years of the grueling life of working during the day and going to law school at night. He became member of the staff of the Law Review, and graduated in 1966 with the degree of Juris Doctor.
In 1964 Neal left the Patent Office to become a Patent Advisor for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Weapons. Here he worked with engineers and scientists who were developing guided missile weapons systems, a field in which he had worked while on active duty in the U.S. Navy. His job was to evaluate the patentability of inventions developed by the Bureau, and then prepare and prosecute patent applications directed to them. After graduating from law school, Neal was hired as a patent attorney by a defense contractor, where he continued working in the weapons development field.
An interest in corporate management as it related to research, development and production of new technology, and a chance meeting with a corporate executive at a conference, drew Neal into a new chapter in his career. In 1968 he moved to Philadelphia to become the Assistant to the Vice President and General Manager of a division of a large corporation that manufactured parts for the auto industry but, more interesting to Neal, was developing and producing the nation’s first high speed trains – the Metroliners. His duties were to assist the VP in the day-to-day management of the operations, as well to insure that intellectual property emerging from this program was protected. He also provided counsel during hearings before the U.S. Congress.
In 1970 an overture from an intellectual property law firm brought Neal back to Washington. He became a partner in the firm three years later. Here he practiced all facets of intellectual property law, including invention evaluation, patent and trademark prosecution before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and matters before the Federal Courts. He represented large and small businesses, as well as individuals. In 1977, Neal was asked to join a task force at the newly established U.S. Department of Energy, whose mission was to formulate and negotiate agreements between the government and private industry to develop new energy technology. This was the time of the first energy crisis, and the idea seemed intriguing, so Neal left his law firm for this new challenge. Among the projects in which he participated were the first wind turbine farms, oil shale recovery systems, and solar power generation. There followed appointment by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Chief Patent Counsel, where he managed the intellectual property programs run by the NRC and its contractors.
In 1987 Neal was selected to become an Administrative Patent Judge on the Board of Appeals and Interferences of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and so it was back to where it all had started some twenty-five years before, albeit at the other end of the spectrum. In his seventeen years as an Administrative Patent Judge, Neal participated in deciding over five thousand appeals from adverse decisions on patentability made by patent examiners, and authored some eighteen hundred of these opinions. He also participated in determinations of first inventorship, investigated and recommended dispositions in attorney ethics and malpractice cases, and prepared patent bar examination questions. It was from this position that Neal retired in 2005.
Raised in a family where service to others was a way of life, Neal also has been very active in the communities in which he has lived. He served on the Boards of Directors of numerous organizations, including Maryland chapters of the American Red Cross and Crimesolvers. He has been a volunteer paramedic for thirty years and presently is the EMS Captain of Fairfield (PA) Fire & EMS. He also was elected to the Carroll Valley Borough Council in 2007, and serves on the Planning Commission and the Public Safety Committee.