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Alan S. Teran, Ph.D.

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Alan S. Teran, Ph.D., is an associate in the Litigation Department and Intellectual Property Group.

His practice focuses on a variety of intellectual property issues, including worldwide patent portfolio development and litigation. Alan also has experience with in-house legal and compliance matters, including product counseling, commercial contracts, and privacy.

Alan has expertise in semiconductor devices and fabrication as well as experience with a wide range of technologies, including augmented/virtual reality-based software solutions; material processing operations; control systems; integrated circuits; machine learning-based financial services software; media and mobile technology; medical devices; and secondary batteries.

Alan is a registered patent attorney before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office; and a Certified Information Privacy Professional in the United States (CIPP/US) with the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

Alan received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan, where his research focused on energy harvesting technologies and semiconductor physics for Internet-of-Things and medical applications.

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A recent Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision related to hybrid quantum computing paves the way for more quantum computing-related patents, and potential litigation.  

Quantum computing is an important and evolving form of computing that has yet to be truly realized. Classical computing is, fundamentally, governed by the ability to store information in a bit, a binary unit represented by a one or a zero. In contrast, quantum computing is governed by a quantum bit, or qubit, which can represent an infinite, continuous number of possible states. For example, while 2 bits can store four combinations (00, 01, 10, or 11), 2 qubits can store all four combinations simultaneously. Hybrid quantum-classical computing (“HQC”) involves using both quantum computing and classical computing together in a system for one to address the shortcomings of the other. At its core, both types of computing are well known and rely on mathematical concepts making patent claims on a HQC highly susceptible to patent ineligibility attacks.