Ira Matsil

Practice Areas

Ira Matsil's practice focuses on patent prosecution and portfolio strategy for technology companies, with technical coverage spanning electronic circuits, semiconductors, telecommunications, optics, and computer hardware and software. His clients include large multinational corporations as well as growth-stage companies building early-stage portfolios. He is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

His USPTO practice covers original applications, continuations, continuations-in-part, divisionals, reexaminations, and reissues. A recurring consideration in his prosecution work is how decisions made during prosecution — claim scope, continuation strategy, amendment choices, prosecution history — affect a portfolio's utility in subsequent licensing negotiations, inter partes review proceedings, or litigation. His engagements with large multinationals have typically involved working across multiple invention disclosure cycles, managing pipelines of pending applications, and advising on continuation and maintenance decisions that shape the long-term composition of the portfolio. Client feedback from Chambers submissions describes him as "very experienced and knowledgeable" with "very good responsiveness" and as "excellent both in legal and technical expertise." One client noted that his "commercial vision is very strong."

He has substantial experience with subject matter eligibility challenges under 35 U.S.C. § 101, particularly for software and computer-implemented inventions under the Alice/Mayo framework. He has spoken on § 101 prosecution strategies at the 59th Annual Intellectual Property Law Program at the Center for American and International Law and addressed related developments at the SMU Tsai Center's 22nd Annual Symposium on Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property in February 2026.

In the automotive and electric vehicle sector, his work includes prosecution covering advanced driver-assistance systems, power electronics, battery management, and vehicle electrification. In semiconductors, his experience extends to chip architecture, fabrication, packaging, and hardware-software interfaces. In telecommunications and wireless, his portfolio work spans infrastructure technologies through current wireless standards. In software, cloud computing, and AI, his engagements frequently involve structuring claims to satisfy § 101 requirements while maintaining commercially useful scope.

Matsil also handles patent opinion and counseling work, including infringement and validity analyses for licensing, acquisition due diligence, and litigation preparation. He has served as a technical resource in patent infringement matters alongside litigation counsel, contributing analysis on claim construction, prior art, and technical case strategy. His involvement in licensing programs and patent disputes has cumulatively spanned multi-billion dollar matters across both plaintiff-side and defense-side engagements.

A portion of his practice involves international clients seeking US patent protection, including multinationals headquartered in Asia and Europe. These engagements require coordination between foreign inventors and US counsel, alignment of domestic and international prosecution strategies, and familiarity with differences between foreign practice and USPTO requirements. Considerations include priority claim management, continuation practice across jurisdictions, and the relationship between US prosecution history and enforceability in potential US litigation.

Career

In 1999, Ira Matsil co-founded Slater Matsil, LLP, a Dallas-based intellectual property boutique focused on technology-sector clients. The firm's model is built around attorneys with engineering and scientific backgrounds. In addition to his client work, Matsil manages a team of technical professionals and is involved in developing attorneys at the firm. Slater Matsil has received recognition in Chambers USA, IAM Patent 1000, and other independent evaluations over multiple consecutive years.

Matsil received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and his master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. He joined Texas Instruments following his undergraduate studies and worked there as a lead engineer and program manager.

While at TI, Matsil transitioned into the company's legal department, first as a patent agent and then as a practicing attorney after graduating magna cum laude from Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law. He was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an Editor of the SMU Law Review. His in-house work at TI included semiconductor license negotiations and patent prosecution across memories, digital signal processing, and embedded processor architectures. He remained in TI's legal department for seven years before entering private practice. That period included direct involvement in licensing discussions with major technology companies, providing early exposure to how patent portfolio quality affects outcomes in commercial negotiations.

His client base includes large multinational corporations as well as growth-stage technology companies across the automotive, semiconductor, telecommunications, and software sectors. Engagements with established multinationals have typically involved ongoing portfolio management across business units and multiple annual invention disclosure cycles. Work with earlier-stage companies has focused on establishing foundational portfolios and advising on prosecution resource allocation across competing innovation priorities.

Matsil is a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the Dallas Bar Association, where he served as a director of the Intellectual Property Section. He is registered to practice before the USPTO and is a member of the State Bar of Texas. He has been ranked in Chambers USA continuously since 2021, recognized as an IAM Patent 1000 Recommended Individual for Patent Prosecution, and selected to IAM Strategy 300: The World's Leading IP Strategists. He has been included in Texas Super Lawyers every year from 2012 through 2026, in U.S. News – Best Lawyers in America from 2021 through 2026, and in D Magazine's Best Lawyers in Dallas a number of times since 2015, most recently in 2026.

Professional Memberships

American Intellectual Property Law Association; Dallas Bar Association; State Bar of Texas; United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Personal

BS, electrical engineering, the University of Texas at Austin; MS, electrical engineering, the University of Texas at Arlington; J.D., Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law (magna cum laude).