Robert A. Surrette, a shareholder with McAndrews Held & Malloy Ltd, focuses his practice on the resolution of intellectual property and technology-related disputes with an emphasis on patent, trademark, and trade dress litigation. Specifically, Bob has extensive experience in managing and preparing complex intellectual property cases for trial, including overseeing all aspects of pre-trial discovery, procuring and supervising experts, preparing and arguing pre-trial, dispositive and post-trial motions, and participating in multi-week trials. Bob also has experience in the preparation of appellate briefs for various appellate courts.

Bob also maintains an active client counseling practice where he advises clients on the acquisition and development of intellectual property and on the structuring of transactions for the transfer of intellectual property.

Bob has litigated and counseled clients with respect to such diverse technologies as balloon angioplasty catheters, implantable cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators, digital jukeboxes, electronic dart boards, exhaust systems, surgical cutting tools, medical image capture systems, contact lenses, fluorescent lighting systems, and chillers.

Prior to joining McAndrews Held & Malloy LTD in 1998, Bob served as Law Clerk to the Honorable John A. Nordberg, Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Bob graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law with Highest Honors in May 1997. He served as Executive Notes and Comments Editor for the Chicago-Kent Law Review and is a member of the Order of the Coif. Prior to attending law school, Bob worked for Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies, for over five years, where he held various engineering positions of increasing responsibility, culminating in Special Assistant to the Vice President, Quality Assurance and Product Integrity.

Bob currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law where he teaches an upper-level writing and research class focusing on intellectual property. He has also served as a Lecturer at Northwestern University, School of Engineering. His intellectual property publications include "Warner-Jenkinson v. Hilton Davis: The Supreme Court Decides that the Doctrine of Equivalents Lives," IP Litigator, July/August 1997 (with Timothy J. Malloy) and "Infringement and Equivalents - Has There Been A Significant Change," in Patent Litigation (PLI Patents, Copyrights, and Literary Property Course Handbook Series, 1996) (with Timothy J. Malloy).