Patent and Trademark Attorney, Clock Tower Law Group (Twitter @ErikJHeels, heels@alum.mit.edu)
Greater Boston Area
- Current
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- Keyboard Player at MCats Band
- Patent and Trademark Attorney at Clock Tower Law Group
- Past
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- Co-Founder at Heels.com
- Dir. of Marketing and Sales at Verio Inc.
- [See Verio Inc.] at NTT/Verio
- VP of Marketing and Sales at Inherent.Com Inc.
- Director, Internet Product Development at American Lawyer Media
- Internet Systems Architect at Lawyers Cooperative Publishing
- Program Manager at United States Air Force
- Quality Assurance Engineer at Cayman Systems
- Quality Assurance Engineer at Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN)
- Research Engineer at Rautaruukki OY
- Education
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- University of Maine School of Law
- Franklin Pierce Law Center
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Cape Elizabeth High School
- Recommended
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Erik J. Heels’s Summary
Erik J. Heels is an MIT engineer; trademark, domain name, and patent lawyer; Red Sox fan; and music lover. He blogs about technology, law, baseball, and rock 'n' roll at ErikJHeels.com.
Erik has been on the Internet since 1984 and has extensive experience working in high-tech companies such as Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), Cayman Systems, and Verio Inc. In 1992, Erik wrote "The Legal List," the first book published simultaneously on the Internet and in print. Erik's 15 minutes of fame started after reviews of that book appeared in Internet World, Wired, and The New York Times. He has been writing the "nothing.but.net" column for the ABA's Law Practice magazine since 1996 and regularly speaks about issues related to law and technology. After law school, he worked for various Internet companies, including a four-year stint with Verio, which was sold for $6 billion cash in the largest cash deal in Internet history. In 2001, he launched Clock Tower Law Group. He earned his BS in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his JD from the University of Maine School of Law (Maine Law).
In his spare time, Erik enjoys hacking with computers, writing, baseball, and seeking the perfect Hammond B-3 sound on his keyboard. On Erik's desk are pictures of his lovely wife, Pirjo, and their three children: Sam, Ben, and Sonja. His life adventures include living in Finland, traveling to 10 countries and to 48 of the 50 states, pulling 6 Gs and soloing a jet in the Air Force, and swimming in the Arctic Ocean.
Erik J. Heels’s Specialties:
Trademark, domain name, and patent law. See representative clients at http://ClockTowerLaw.com/clients.
Erik J. Heels’s Experience
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Keyboard Player
MCats Band
(Music industry)
January 2005 — Present (4 years 7 months)
MCatsBand.org was formed in 2005 to raise money for an elementary school in Acton, MA, the McCarthy-Towne School (MCT), where all of the founding members’ children attended.
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Patent and Trademark Attorney
Clock Tower Law Group
(Law Practice industry)
March 2001 — Present (8 years 5 months)
Founder and owner of this trademark, domain name, and patent law firm located 25 miles west of Boston.
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Co-Founder
Heels.com
(Apparel & Fashion industry)
June 2007 — September 2008 (1 year 4 months)
Company Overview: Heels.com is an online retail shopping site for designer women's shoes.
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Dir. of Marketing and Sales
Verio Inc.
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; VRIO; Internet industry)
June 1997 — March 2001 (3 years 10 months)
Company Overview: The world's largest web hosting company and a leading provider of comprehensive Internet solutions. Sold to NTT Communications in 2000.
Key Accomplishments: Helped grow the company from a privately held start-up with 300 employees and a $50 million revenue run rate to a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: VRIO) with 1800 employees, a $300 million revenue run rate, and a $5 billion market capitalization. Rewrote a 300-page technical document on Verio's UNIX hosting product. Wrote Verio's 1999 annual report for the CFO and General Counsel. Managed a staff of 20 and a budget of $12 million for a 22-city national launch of DSL products. -
[See Verio Inc.]
NTT/Verio
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; VRIO; Internet industry)
June 1997 — March 2001 (3 years 10 months)
See Verio Inc. Verio Inc. became NTT/Verio in 200 after being acquired by NTT Communications Corp., whose parent company is Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation.
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VP of Marketing and Sales
Inherent.Com Inc.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 1996 — May 1997 (1 year 3 months)
Company Overview: A leading provider of web sites and other Internet and intranet solutions for legal professionals.
Key Accomplishments: Managed the company through five quarters of triple-digit revenue growth. Closed a marketing alliance and channel sales contract with Martindale-Hubbell, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc., for Martindale-Hubbell to market and sell web sites developed by Inherent.Com. Closed a contract with Lexis-Nexis, also a division of Reed Elsevier Inc., to develop a major web site. -
Director, Internet Product Development
American Lawyer Media
(Publishing industry)
November 1995 — March 1996 (5 months)
Company Overview: A leading legal media company.
Key Accomplishments: Designed an improved Internet products and services for Counsel Connect (an online service for lawyers) and CourtTV. -
Internet Systems Architect
Lawyers Cooperative Publishing
(Publishing industry)
January 1995 — November 1995 (11 months)
Company Overview: A leading legal publisher and a division of Thomson Legal Publishing.
Key Accomplishments: Installed and configured the servers (FTP, HTTP, DNS) for and designed and wrote all of the content for LCP's first web site (www.lcp.com). Published the 6th and 7th editions of "The Legal List" simultaneously in print and on the Internet and introduced print-and-pay copyright. -
Program Manager
United States Air Force
(Military industry)
April 1989 — October 1992 (3 years 7 months)
Reese AFB, TX, and Hanscom AFB, MA; Active Duty Captain
Key Accomplishments: Lead the 30-person four-city team for a $60 million effort to upgrade four major E-3 Airborne Warning And Control Systems (AWACS) computer subsystems. Designed a $250 thousand computer network for 300 users and managed a staff of four. Soloed an Air Force jet in pilot training prior to Hanscom. -
Quality Assurance Engineer
Cayman Systems
(Computer Networking industry)
January 1990 — December 1990 (1 year)
Company Overview: Manufacturer of internetworking hardware and software.
Key Accomplishments: Wrote software for testing computer networking products (including the GatorBox, a Macintosh-to-Ethernet network gateway). Programmed in Think C. -
Quality Assurance Engineer
Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN)
(Computer Software industry)
October 1988 — April 1989 (7 months)
Company Overview: A pioneering company that helped invent the Internet.
Key Accomplishments: Conducted system administration, automated QA testing, problem tracking, and software installation documentation for the Butterfly GP1000 parallel-processing computer (running Mach 1000, a Berkeley 4.3-compatible version of UNIX). -
Research Engineer
Rautaruukki OY
(Public Company; Mining & Metals industry)
June 1988 — September 1988 (4 months)
Company Overview: Europe's largest steel plant.
Key Accomplishments: Prototyped network software (transparent and nontransparent task-to-task communication between IBM AT and DEC MicroVAX computers on a DECnet local area network) for use in manufacturing process control. Programmed in TurboPascal and VAX FORTRAN. Learned basic Finnish.
Erik J. Heels’s Education
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University of Maine School of Law
JD , Law , 1992 — 1995
Passed the "patent bar" exam while still a student. Graduated early (in 2.5 years).
- Activities and Societies:
- Founder, Maine Law and Technology Association (MLTA).
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Franklin Pierce Law Center
Intellectual Property Summer Institute (IPSI) 1994 — 1994
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BS , Electrical Engineering , 1984 — 1988
Key Accomplishments: For BSEE thesis in the Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation, integrated a Macintosh personal computer with a microcomputer-controlled above-knee prosthesis and programmed in Lightspeed C and CP/M 80 assembly language. For teaching assistant position in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, taught students in areas of recursion, iteration, query database construction, and higher level language abstractions and programmed in LISP.
- Activities and Societies:
- MIT Logarhythms, Next Act, Air Force ROTC
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Cape Elizabeth High School
1980 — 1984
Additional Information
Erik J. Heels’s Websites:
Erik J. Heels’s Interests:
patent law, trademark law, technology, baseball, music, rock 'n' roll
Erik J. Heels’s Honors:
InternetWire Newsmaker Award, 2000
ABA's Top 25 Bestseller Book List, 1995-1996
Erik J. Heels’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
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- reference requests
- getting back in touch
