Thomas Folsom

Intellectual Property Judgment for Business Transactions

Thomas’s background is especially useful where intellectual property and business value intersect. His experience includes patents, trademarks, copyrights, unfair competition, patent portfolio management, commercialization strategy, and diligence questions that can affect corporate transactions.

In deal contexts, intellectual property is often more than an asset schedule. It can affect valuation, risk allocation, competitive positioning, post-closing integration, and the buyer’s ability to use or protect the acquired business. Thomas’s background helps the firm evaluate those issues with more technical and legal depth.

A Career Spanning Technology, National Security, and Legal Education

Thomas’s professional path includes military service, technology-adjacent national security work, private legal practice, and decades in legal education. His Air Force and NSA-related experience gave him early exposure to technical and operational environments before he entered the legal profession.

He later taught at several institutions, including Regent University, where he served as a professor for 17 years. His teaching focused on Contract Law, Copyright Law, Trademark Law, Patent Law, and survey courses in Intellectual Property Law. He has also taught Cybersecurity Law and related subjects.

Thomas currently serves as a law professor at Regent University in Virginia Beach.

Scholarship, Teaching, and Professional Contribution

Thomas has been recognized for both teaching and legal scholarship. In 2019, he was named Professor of the Year for first-year law students by the Regent University School of Law Student Bar Association. In 2010, he received Regent University’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

His scholarship has also been recognized nationally. In 2009, Thomas received the Ladas Memorial Award from the International Trademark Association for his article, “Space Pirates, Hitchhikers, Guides, and the Public Interest: Transformational Trademark Law in Cyberspace,” honoring excellence in writing on a trademark-related subject.

Thomas has consistently ranked in the top 10% of authors by all-time downloads on SSRN, a widely used platform for legal scholarship. His professional contributions also include work with the American Bar Association’s IP Law Committee 254, the Special Committee on Trademarks and the Internet, where he contributed to the response to ICANN’s Implementation Recommendation Team Final Report on trademark issues.

He also contributed through the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Trademark Internet Committee, including work on dispute resolution procedures related to ICANN’s gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook. That work reflects a career-long focus on the intersection of intellectual property, technology, internet governance, and business strategy.

Outside the Office

Outside of his professional work, Thomas enjoys bicycling, hiking, skiing, mountaineering, surfing, studying languages, and exploring computer languages. He is an avid international traveler and lecturer, has been married for 34 years, and is the proud father of three sons and one daughter.

• Supreme Court of Colorado (inactive)
• Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals
• United States Supreme Court
• Licensed Patent Attorney (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)

• U.S. Air Force Academy, B.S., 1971. Concentration in Chinese and Far Eastern Area Studies (top third, academic order of merit).
• Georgetown University Law Center, J.D., 1978. Editor, American Criminal Law Review (invitations extended to students in the top 7-15% of the class).