Darrell A. Fruth Email & Phone Number

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

As leader of my firm's Technology and Software Transactions Group, I help clients develop and commercialize new technologies, with a focus on life science, clean-tech and software. I typically spend my day counseling on complex licensing, collaboration and supply chain agreements. I also help with M&A deals and other strategic transactions.My experience includes assisting life science companies with all aspects of developing and commercializing human therapies (from drug discovery, clinical trials, and licensing to commercial supply and distribution), helping clients license software services and platforms that utilize machine learning and other advanced technologies, representing entrepreneurs spinning out inventions from major academic research institutions, advising a leading video game maker on licensing its technology into diverse verticals, negotiating Esports agreements and representing a number of clients on clean-tech deals that help decarbonize the economy.

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

Transactional experience focused on software-related master service agreements, software as a service agreements, service level agreements, and source code agreements; reviewed and conducted due diligence for IP rights in various contracts for software users, video game publishers, and app developers.Counseling and compliance experience included a wide range of technical and legal issues (patent and trademark rights, privacy, comparative advertising, consumer testing, and environmental regulations); advised on consumer safety standards for new consumer products; worked in-house on secondment to support product teams on complex compliance issues for consumer products in rapidly changing regulatory environment. Litigation and white collar defense work included broad experience asserting and defending patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret claims; conducted internal investigations and counseled management on responding to criminal investigations, responded to subpoenas, interviewed employees, and defended clients through trial against federal felony charges.

Durham, North Carolina

Supervised law students providing a broad range of corporate and transactional services to early-stage entrepreneurs with a focus on intellectual property and technology law issues including obtaining assignments to intellectual property, preparing privacy policies and website terms of use, counseling on patentable inventions and negotiating patent licenses, complying with federal privacy laws and regulations, complying with copyright and open-source rights, and advising clients on how to select trademarks with the appropriate risk profile.

San Francisco, California

In addition to practicing high-stakes patent litigation, I also argued and won a civil rights case on appeal that established constitutional rights for civil detainees, which has been cited by judges more than 2,500 times.

Reno, Nevada, United States

I recommended dispositions on criminal and civil motions and helped run jury trials.

San Francisco, California, United States

I worked in the Advanced Technologies Group to research, design and pilot-test a process to reclaim produced water from oil fields.