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ABOUT US
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Meet the Team
About US
Accelerate IP’s Attorneys are entrepreneurs and founders just like you and know what it take to protect your business. Our Attorneys have and are currently building their own startups outside of the law firm, and know what it takes to form and protect your business from the start. Both Clark and Burt have experience starting a business, protecting its intellectual property and working towards selling their products in commerce.
Clark Proffitt
Partner
Attorney Clark Proffitt’s intellectual property, patent law and business law practice focuses on helping small businesses and inventors innovate, increase their standing in the marketplace, and realize their vision. He excels in guiding his clients through the often-confusing maze of financial and legal decisions to create strategies that ensure their security and support the accomplishment of cherished business and personal goals. His considerable legal expertise includes prosecution, litigation, and transactions in copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets, as well as planning strategies for small business owners. Whether you are a single inventor or an established business with a large research and development budget, or whether you are just choosing a brand or trying to protect a well-earned reputation, Clark will help you craft a strategy that uses the tools available under the law to achieve your goals for your business today and for years to come.
Clark earned a B.Sc in biochemistry from Brigham Young University in 2005 and performed research in organic photochemistry under Dr. Stephen Fleming. He went on to graduate magna cum laude from the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law in 2008. He was a Center Scholar for the Center for Law, Science and Technology and a staff writer and articles editor for Arizona State University Law Journal. Clark passed the patent bar while still in law school and is admitted to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (2007), the State Bar of Arizona (2008), the U.S. District Court, Arizona (2009), the U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit (2010), and the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (2011). He had a prominent role in litigating the case that updated the standard for the award of attorneys’ fees in a trademark infringement case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Clark has worked as an intellectual property attorney and patent attorney since 2008 and worked on a wide variety of technologies
Clark was famous in his neighborhood when he survived a fall off an 80-foot cliff, which he describes as being a lot like starting your own business. He is an entrepreneur himself and knows how challenging it can be to bring a new product to market. He has worked with many small businesses and startups over the course of his career, and he enjoys educating people, providing seminars and other educational opportunities to his community and teaches contract drafting as an adjunct professor at the Rogers College of Law at University of Arizona. Clark is passionate about helping people use the law to fulfill their vision for their business.
Most importantly, Clark is the proud husband to his wife, Margaret, and dad to four kids (Booker, Ike, Asher, and Miriam) two dogs (Minty and Rosie), two tortoises (Fezzik and Buttercup), and 8 trees (no names… they’re trees).
Burt Skiba
Partner
Attorney Burt Skiba, an experienced engineer that focuses his practice on intellectual property and startup law. Burt advises a wide range of companies in all manner of transactions involving intellectual property matters. Burt assists clients with patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and other IP related matters. He specializes in early-stage startups helping establish and implementing your business’s intellectual property plan.
Burt has significant experience taking an invention from concept to helping with the design and then turning that design into a patent application. Burt has three 3D printers, and SolidWorks CAD program to help his clients develop their inventions. Burt has four patents, and another three pending patent applications. In addition, Burt has extensive experience in trademark law and has helped businesses develop their brand and protect that brand once established.
Prior to law school, Burt worked as a mechanical engineer for 11 years, and has extensive technical experience with complex systems such as turbine engines, rockets, and missiles. While as an engineer Burt received his MBA in Finance. During law school, Burt worked for the Naval Surface Warfare Center and a large law firm where he wrote multiple patent applications on a broad range of technologies. Burt uses his engineering and business experience within his law practice to help his clients protect their ideas, processes, and methods building value in your company. Burt has formed three startups, two of which are still going, of his own and knows what it takes to start and protect your business and intellectual property.
Burt is licensed in Alabama and Washington D.C. and for Arizona matters works under Clark Proffitt while working on getting licensed in Arizona.
Burt spends his free time with his wife and four kids and soon to be fifth kid, his dog “Oakley,” coaching baseball, designing new products and taking his kids golfing.
