About Peter

Peter is a registered patent attorney with a diverse business background and an insatiable curiosity about new technologies. A senior attorney at Dicke, Billig & Czaja since 2010, Peter is certified by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. His clients receive broad-based, cost-effective advice based on his balanced practice of creating, licensing, and litigating patent issues. Clients throughout the U.S., the Pacific Rim and Europe value his services.

Over a twelve year period after his graduation from law school, Peter’s career included stints as in-house patent counsel for such major technology companies as 3M, Guidant, and Medtronic. Since 1999 he has worked exclusively as outside counsel, where he can experience greater technical variety and his diverse clientele can benefit from his own corporate experience.

Peter is widely experienced in dozens of technical fields, notably electronics, optics, materials science, computer architectures and applications, data storage, financial and e-commerce methods, and medical devices in the cardiac, orthopedic, and neurological markets, among others. Peter’s considerable litigation experience includes e-commerce methods, bulk material conveyors, ball point pens, golf course management software, and feminine hygiene products.

Having taught software law and intellectual property strategy at the graduate level at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota, Peter also likes to take his knowledge on the road. He has found receptive audiences around the world. At the International Conference on Management of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, Peter was a speaker on how evolving issues in intellectual property rights impact management training. Peter also served as a faculty member at The Sedona Conference on Patent Litigation and reminisced over “Twenty Years of Change in Technology Law” at the University of North Dakota Law School.

After attending Catholic and public schools in Spokane and suburban Seattle, Peter graduated from Seattle University with a Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1979. He listened to U.S. and Soviet submarines, taught physics, and sold thermostats until he received his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in 1988. He also earned a Master of Science in Management of Technology from the University of Minnesota in 2000.

Peter is a former member of the Parish Pastoral Council and current member (past president) of the Men’s Club at the Church of St. Joseph in West St. Paul. He loves to travel with his wife and two adult daughters even if they don’t like stopping at all the historical and geological markers.