Problems are the price of progress.
-Charles Kettering
MARCUS N. DIBUDUO
Marcus DiBuduo is a Director in Fennemore’s Fresno office whose practice focuses on helping clients acquire, protect, and enforce intellectual property rights. He advises entrepreneurs, emerging-growth companies, investment-ready businesses, and established enterprises on strategies involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and related intellectual property assets.
Marcus’s work begins with understanding each client’s technology, business objectives, competitive position, and risk profile. He then helps clients build practical strategies to preserve and enforce value in their innovations, brands, creative works, and proprietary information. Those strategies often include patent and trademark filing programs, confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements, trade secret protections, and enforcement planning.
As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in business operations, Marcus helps clients evaluate how responsible AI use fits within broader intellectual property strategy. His AI-related counseling includes ownership of AI-generated and AI-assisted work, protection of confidential information, vendor and tool diligence, documentation of human contribution, provenance, enforcement risk, and internal governance. He is also active in the international intellectual property community, including through the International Trademark Association’s Technology Transformation Committee, where he contributes to work at the intersection of IP rights, emerging technologies, cross-border legal developments, and global technology governance.
Before entering the legal field, Marcus worked as an electrical engineer on cellular communications and surveillance systems, using early machine-learning and security techniques well before “AI” became part of the daily business vocabulary. His engineering work also exposed him firsthand to the U.S. patent system as an inventor, an experience that continues to inform how he helps clients acquire, protect, and enforce intellectual property rights. That technical foundation helps him understand how clients’ technologies work, how data and systems interact, and how technical decisions can affect ownership, confidentiality, evidence, and enforcement.
So as not to stray too far from his family’s deep agricultural roots in California’s Central Valley, Marcus, his wife, and their three children live on rural property with pecan trees and various livestock. His “time off” generally involves boots, shovels, and some form of agricultural engineering, although he still occasionally tinkers with homemade microprocessor-based devices and vibe-codes software tools.
Education
- J.D., San Joaquin College of Law
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, California State University, Fresno
Areas Of Practice
Create. Protect. Thrive.
Your Technology and Intellectual Property Assets Are The Lifeblood Of Your Business: We Partner With You To Protect Your Critical IP —and To Identify and Implement IP Strategies To Help You Thrive.
Experienced, forward-thinking advocates who go beyond the expected for clients in dispute prevention and resolution.
Practical legal counsel for responsible AI adoption, contracting, governance, and risk management.
Our business attorneys recognize and appreciate the value of entrepreneurship and innovation, and are committed to providing efficient, straightforward and business-oriented solutions that facilitate success and avoid pitfalls while recognizing early capital is precious and expensive.
Our privacy and data security practice addresses the administrative, regulatory and litigation concerns of businesses facing mounting threats and increasing state and federal regulation in the areas of data privacy, data breach and cybersecurity.
Articles and Presentations
- Author, “Beyond AI Adoption: The Control Questions Now Shaping Intellectual Property Strategy,” Fennemore Article, June 10, 2026
- Author, “Protecting What’s Yours: A Guide to IP Protection for Entrepreneurs and Innovators,” Fennemore Blog, April 23, 2025
Awards and Honors
- Martindale-Hubbell Distinguished™ Rating
- Northern California Super Lawyers®, 2019-2026
- Northern California Super Lawyers® Rising Stars, 2012-2018
Professional and Community Activities
- Member, International Trademark Association (INTA)
- Member, INTA Technology Transformation Committee, Trends in Technology Subcommittee, Artificial Intelligence Working Group
- Member, American Intellectual Property Law Association
- Member, State Bar of California, Intellectual Property Law Section
- Member, Fresno County Bar Association
Admissions
- California
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
- U.S. District Court, Central District of California
- U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
- U.S. District Court, Southern District of California
- U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit