Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Additions

Caesar Rivise announced that Douglas Panzer rejoined the firm as a partner.

He will practice out of both the firm's Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley offices.

An associate with the firm from 2006 until 2012, until recently Panzer served as of counsel to Fitzpatrick Lentz & Bubba in Lehigh Valley, where he chaired its intellectual property practice.

A registered patent attorney, Panzer has over 13 years of experience representing midsize and startup companies in domestic and international intellectual property matters with special emphasis on trademark protection, prosecution, portfolio management and enforcement.

His clients include product and service companies, for whom he provides guidance and legal services to grow and protect their branded products and services.

He established relationships with co-counsel to support product companies' brand expansion efforts and to effect brand protection strategies for his clients facing counterfeiting, trademark infringement and other forms of unfair competition from third parties.

With a background in software/e-commerce development, Panzer's career encompasses more than 20 years in the software industry.

His practice includes negotiating license and service agreements, preparing and filing patent applications, and managing enterprise risk through the preparation and enforcement of policies, including technology usage and trade secret policies.

Panzer also maintains a litigation practice particularly involving matters under the Hatch-

Waxman Act. He is a frequent speaker on such topics as entrepreneurship and strategic innovation initiatives.

Panzer is a graduate of American University Washington College of Law.

He is a member of the Pennsylvania, Lehigh and Northampton county bar associations.

Honored

Bankruptcy attorney Prince Altee Thomas of Fox Rothschild in Philadelphia is set to be honored with the A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award during the 30th Pennsylvania Bar Association Minority Attorney Conference "Communities Under Attack and Leadership Going Forward," to be held from Oct. 3 to 4 at the Pennsylvania Bar Institute CLE Conference Center in Philadelphia.

The award recognizes the accomplishments of a lawyer or judge who demonstrates dedication to the legal profession and the minority community through civil, community or legal service.

Thomas has a transactional and litigation bankruptcy practice at Fox Rothschild, where he co-chairs the firm's diversity committee and helped to establish the firm's LGBTQ and allies group.

He also led the creation of an in-house diversity newsletter that celebrates the achievements of the firm's diverse lawyers and helped to develop a diversity reporter role to help initiate conversations around diversity issues in the firm's 27 offices.

Locally, he is an executive board member of the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group.

Thomas is a past treasurer and former executive board member of the Barristers Association of Philadelphia where he regularly volunteered for community legal clinics and mentored minority law students.

He formerly chaired the minority outreach committee of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania's Bankruptcy Conference.

At the state level, Thomas helped organize the PBA minority bar committee's first Diversity Summit.

An active member of the committee, he served a term as its co-vice chair and then as chair.

As co-chair of its community outreach subcommittee, Thomas was part of a statewide effort to conduct programming to minority and low-income communities about their legal rights.

He is currently a member of the PBA House of Delegates, served two terms as a board member of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, and was a board member of the Pennsylvania Bar Foundation.

Thomas writes and lectures frequently about debtors' and creditors' rights issues, as well as diversity topics. He serves as a board member of and volunteers for the Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project, which provides bankruptcy counseling to the indigent.

Thomas is a member of the American Bar Association, American Bankruptcy Institute, Pennsylvania Bar Association, Philadelphia Bar Association, Barristers Association of Philadelphia and Eastern District of Pennsylvania Bankruptcy Conference.

He received his Juris Doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law.