About Jeff

Being a serious baseball player earlier in life taught Jeff the importance of being strategic and nimble, lessons which have stayed with him in his practice of intellectual property law as a partner at Dicke, Billig & Czaja.

During a single season on his amateur team, the Jamestown (ND) Merchants, Jeff stole a club record 30 bases. Despite several future Big Leaguers playing for the same team in subsequent years, that 1990 record still stands. These days, he leaves the base-stealing to his son, whose team Jeff coaches. He gets personal satisfaction from covering the bases for his clients, who appreciate Jeff’s quick grasp of complex engineering issues and litigator’s sense of strategy.

Jeff’s primary focus is on the preparation and prosecution of patent applications for complex electrical hardware and software inventions, and his education and experience make him uniquely qualified counsel.

A contributing author and editor of Intellectual Property Law for Business Lawyers (Thomson West), Jeff’s significant litigation experience helps him to draft stronger patent applications by anticipating and accounting for potential litigation issues which may arise when the patent applications become issued patents. He has been named by his peers as a Rising Star in the legal community.

In addition to earning his law degree from the University of North Dakota School of Law with distinction and other honors, Jeff completed numerous specialized intellectual property courses at the Franklin Pierce Law Center (Intellectual Property Summer Institute, 1993).

Jeff’s primary areas of technical specialization are electrical, electro-mechanical, and process technologies with an emphasis in computer hardware, software and communications, semiconductors, medical devices, storage devices, and image processing. During his undergraduate studies, Jeff worked on the design and reliability of avionics equipment for commercial aircraft at Rockwell International.

While playing baseball at the varsity level during his undergraduate years at the University of North Dakota, Jeff managed to graduate near the top of his class and to win membership to two prestigious engineering honor societies. Jeff also earned a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, with a primary focus on semiconductor physics, and computer hardware/software and communications.

Outside the office, Jeff maintains an active lifestyle (running, playing basketball, golfing, and weightlifting) and enjoys watching his family participate as well. In addition to coaching his son’s baseball and basketball teams, Jeff can be found attending his daughter’s dancing and gymnastics events. He’s also been known to crack the occasional book, and cast a fishing line or two as time permits.