Nixon, Larry S.

2012 Distinguished Alumni Award

In recognition of his pioneering achievements and leadership in the field of intellectual property law.

Larry Nixon is a founding shareholder of Nixon & Vanderhye PC, a law firm founded in 1985 and specializing in patent, trademark, and copyright issues. N&V is consistently ranked in the top 15 law firms ranked by the number of patent applications successfully prosecuted through the United States Patent and Trademark Office to become issued US patents. N&V clients are several thousand in number and range from individual inventors to the largest multinational corporations.

Larry has personally prepared or prosecuted well over 3,000 US patent applications. He also regularly counsels clients as to patent infringement issues, patent validity issues, and patent license negotiation and drafting issues.

Following his graduation from Illinois, Larry became a patent engineer at General Electric’s Washington Patent Operations before serving as an Officer in the US Army, stationed at the Pentagon, where he was a systems analyst designing and writing computer programs. In 1969 he joined Cushman, Darby & Cushman, then a well-known intellectual property law firm in Washington DC, as an associate while he finished his law degree at Georgetown University in 1971. He became a partner at Cushman, Darby & Cushman in 1972 and was there until leaving to found N&V in 1985.