It is with deep sorrow that we note the loss of our friend and colleague Michael Cox, who passed away on Thursday, May 2, 2024. Michael was a member of the Fish family for nearly 20 years, joining our Dallas office as an associate in 2004. He became a principal in 2011 and a senior principal in 2024. Michael was widely recognized for his devotion to his role as a mentor within the firm and his career-long pro bono practice in addition to his professional contributions to the practice of patent law. He was a gifted attorney and warm friend, and we will miss him deeply.
Michael E. Cox works with his clients to devise and implement patent-focused business strategies.
He has significant experience handling patent portfolio development and management; post-grant challenges, including inter partes review and post-grant review petitions before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and the European Patent Office; opinion work; patent litigation, procurement, and licensing; and due diligence. With broad experience in patent law, Michael provides strategic counseling to a broad range of clients — from Fortune 100 companies to startups — that develop innovative computer software, semiconductor fabrication processes and devices, telecommunications, oil drilling and refinement, network security, cloud-based services, medical devices, and consumer devices, as well as many other technologies.
In addition to his work for his clients, Michael is a leader and mentor within the firm. For the past 10 years, he has served as a senior instructor in the firm’s industry-leading Patent Lab, an intensive 2.5-day patent prosecution training program for junior attorneys, patent agents, and clients. Outside the firm, Michael has invested hundreds of hours to help others through his pro bono practice. He has represented under-resourced inventors and small business in a wide range of technologies through several charitable organizations, including the Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts’ patent pro bono for inventors program and the Federal Circuit Bar Association’s United States Patent and Trademark Office pro bono program.
Prior to practicing law, Michael was a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the biophysics and theoretical plasma physics groups. While at Los Alamos, he developed a hand-held magnetocardiograph using superconducting quantum interference devices and published the results from his theoretical research in hot, dense plasmas. As a graduate student at Rice University, he fabricated a Schottky diode using single-walled carbon nanotubes and a prototype of a spintronic transistor. His master’s thesis is titled “Lithographic Techniques for and Electrical Measurements of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.”
