Mr. Neff co-authored a book published by Shepard's McGraw-Hill titled 'NAFTA: Protecting and Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights in North America' and various technology law related articles.
LOS ANGELES, CA, October 15, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Richard E. Neff has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Mr. Neff stands out as a distinguished figure in the technology law sector. As the founder and senior partner at Neff Law Firm APLC since 2010 (and its predecessor Neff Law Group 1992-2004), based in Los Angeles, he has been at the forefront of representing a diverse array of technology companies from across the globe, with the greatest client concentration in Silicon Valley. His expertise extends to software firms and significant technology users, where he safeguards intellectual property rights, and his firm manages copyright and trademark needs internationally. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese in which he also drafts and negotiates agreements (plus on occasion in passable French), Mr. Neff is frequently sought for his skills in international legal matters. His work includes drafting and negotiating agreements such as master license, subscription and software-as-service ("SaaS") agreements, privacy policies, online Terms of Use/Service, and data protection agreements, international distribution agreements, OEM agreements for integrated or combined solutions, partner agreements and nondisclosure agreements. Additionally, Mr. Neff is known for his adeptness in negotiating deals, dispute resolution and consulting on tech-related issues.
Before establishing the second iteration of his successful law firm, Mr. Neff was a partner and chair of the Intellectual Property and Technology Group at Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP from 2004 to 2010. Mr. Neff's earlier career included serving as deputy general counsel for international legal affairs at Ashton-Tate Corporation from 1989 to 1992 (then the largest software company in Southern California) and as a director of Business Software Alliance (BSA) from 1989 to 1992 and its chairperson in 1991. He began his legal career as an attorney with Covington & Burling in Washington, DC (1980-84) and later was at Arnold & Porter (now Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP) (1985-88) where he garnered significant international expertise, including representing the Brazilian Central Bank and the Venezuelan Ministry of Finance in their private debt restructuring negotiations. In his career, which spans four decades, Mr. Neff has achieved renown for his expertise in technology law, focusing on software and ecommerce transactions, copyright issues, international law, privacy and data protection compliance. On behalf of the BSA, he worked directly and successfully with various Latin American governments on reforms to their copyright laws to protect computer software as a literary work. Language written by Mr. Neff and his local lawyers can be found in the Mexican and Peruvian copyright laws and in Brazil's Software Law. His firm also managed the software antipiracy programs of the computer software industry in most major Latin American countries for the BSA and its members (e.g., Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Symantec, and others) during a period spanning 15 years, 1992-2006.
In addition, Mr. Neff co-authored a book published by Shepard's McGraw-Hill titled 'NAFTA: Protecting and Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights in North America' and various technology law related articles including 'Licensing Technology and Content: Important Considerations' (Inside the Minds/Aspatore Books) and 'Trends in IT and IP Protection in Emerging Markets' (Intangible Infrastructure/Credit Suisse) as well as more than a dozen articles in leading newspapers and technology and legal journals (such as the leading legal newspaper in California, Daily Journal).
He also served on the board of directors of the Technology Council of Southern California from approx. 2009 to 2019. He was a member of the Pacific Council for International Policy for over a decade.
Recognizing his contributions to the growth of Brazil's software/technology market due to his antipiracy efforts, ABES, the Brazilian Software Association, awarded Mr. Neff its first prize ever granted, the Premio ABES. A "people person" with good speaking skills, he was sent by the US Government: US State Department as part of its Distinguished Speakers Program, on two speaking tours to Latin America: to Peru in 2010, to deliver 7 speeches in Spanish on various technology and intellectual property themes, including 'Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in Peru,' and to Chile in 2011, where he delivered a speech in Santiago and at 3 universities on the northern coast of Chile called 'National Development: the Importance of Innovation, Technology, Education and Intellectual Property Rights.'
Mr. Neff's educational background includes a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University (Cornell College Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa) and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he also was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Between college and law school, he spent six months as a Humanitarian Policy Intern at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., primarily working on a book on the kidnapping of diplomats with Amb. Donald McHenry, and then he was a Fulbright Scholar in Lima, Peru for a year, studying at the Pontifical Catholic Univ. of Peru and writing about Peru's leftist military coup of 1968 and its adverse impact on the Peruvian oligarchy.
He attributes his success as a lawyer to his unwavering focus on client needs, key attention to the business side of legal issues, good drafting skills and timely delivery of services. In addition, he credits his knowledge of technology, privacy and international law, his ability to provide legal services in various languages and his exposure over 3 decades in the technology sector to virtually every legal issue that has arisen. In the course of his career, he and his firm represented Microsoft for nearly two decades, each of Intuit, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), Logitech and Informatica Corp. for over a decade, and numerous other clients including Yahoo!, LinkedIn/Lynda.com, Apple, Autodesk, Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Interactive Digital Software Association (now ESA/Entertainment Software Association). His client focus is now on well-funded SaaS startups, often in the data software sector, where he sometimes functions as external general counsel, as well as on large content developers and licensors such as APM, the largest production music library in the world and on custom software developers. He and his firm have been recognized by Best Lawyers in America for 15 years, and by various other organizations and publications.
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