Practitioner in Residence

Email: esolovy@qualcomm.com

Eric Solovy is Vice President and Legal Counsel at Qualcomm and a Practitioner in Residence at C-IP².

Eric advises Qualcomm’s global government affairs team on a variety of legal issues, including international trade and investment law; export controls, sanctions, and investment restrictions; and international and domestic intellectual property law.

For over two decades in private practice, Eric counseled companies, trade associations and governments on international trade matters, and litigated disputes over such matters. He focused on the implementation and enforcement of international trade and investment agreements, and on compliance with U.S. sanctions and export controls. Eric was named by Law360 in 2020 as one of only five attorneys in the United States designated as an “MVP” for international trade law, and was consistently recognized in Who’s Who Legal: Trade and Customs.

Before the World Trade Organization, Eric has been at the center of the most complex and contentious disputes in its history, including having served as co-lead outside counsel for Airbus in the dispute over government support to the U.S. large civil aircraft industry. Eric combines his experience in both international trade and intellectual property law, and frequently counsels, writes, and lectures on the international trade law and policy aspects of intellectual property protection, including with respect to intellectual property protection in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS Agreement”) and various Free Trade Agreements.

Eric frequently publishes on the topic of international intellectual property law, including in the Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business, the George Washington International Law Review, the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (Oxford University Press), and the Biotechnology Law Report.

While in private practice at Sidley Austin LLP, Eric served as co-lead outside counsel to the State of Qatar in securing a landmark victory in the World Trade Organization dispute against Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia – Protection of Intellectual Property Rights (DS567)). Working as part of Qatar’s delegation, Eric successfully challenged Saudi Arabia’s failure to protect intellectual property rights as violating multiple provisions of the TRIPS Agreement. This was the first dispute in the WTO’s history in which a panel ruled that a country failed to satisfy its obligation, under Article 61 of the TRIPS Agreement, to initiate criminal procedures against willful intellectual property infringement. It was the first time in the 70+-year history of multilateral trade rules that a panel rejected a party’s national security defense.

Eric was a law clerk to the Honorable Pauline Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He received his JD from Harvard Law School, where he served as the Executive Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. For several years, Eric served as an adjunct professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law, teaching a course in International & Comparative Patent Law.