John E. Cepican

Background

John E. Cepican was born on April 11, 1948, in Davenport, Iowa, United States. Davenport is a city on the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa, and the Davenport office of the patent firm with which he later worked had opened in 1966.

Education

Cepican's formal education is documented at two institutions in Iowa. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University and later completed a Juris Doctor at Drake University in 1974.

Iowa State was founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm and was designated the state's land-grant college in 1864. From its beginning it emphasized agriculture and mechanical engineering, and it was known as the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts from 1898 until 1959, when it took the name Iowa State University of Science and Technology.

Drake's law school traces its origins to 1865 and the Iowa Law School in Des Moines, founded by Iowa Supreme Court justices George G. Wright and Chester C. Cole. Cole later founded the Iowa College of Law in Des Moines in 1875, which joined Drake University when that university was established in 1881. The law school is one of the twenty-five oldest in the United States, and in 1974, the year of Cepican's degree, Drake broke ground on a new building for it.

Career

Cepican was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1974, the year he completed his law degree at Drake. His professional record also places the start of his work with the Des Moines patent firm Henderson & Sturm in 1974, where he served as a partner. The firm had been founded in 1962, opened an Omaha office around 1964, and opened a Davenport, Iowa, office in 1966. Its name in 1978 was Henderson, Strom, Sturm, Cepican & Fix, and from 1979 until 2002 it was known as Henderson & Sturm.

His practice was devoted to patent, trademark, copyright, and unfair competition law, along with federal trial practice. Patent work involves securing protection for inventions and litigating disputes over them before federal courts and agencies. Cepican was admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Iowa and the Central District of Illinois, and before the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982 and to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1983. He was also registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the federal agency that examines patent and trademark applications.

He later practiced with Sturm & Fix LLP, the firm's name from January 1, 2003, and was associated with its Davenport office. The firm's Des Moines office had been established in 1962 and continued to practice in patent and trademark law.

In 2015 the Iowa Supreme Court found that Cepican had violated the Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct, including through neglect of client matters, failures in trust-account procedures for retainers, and failure to respond to the disciplinary board. The court suspended his license to practice law for a period of not less than six months. At that time he maintained an office in Bettendorf but was not actively engaged in practice. The USPTO had also entered a default judgment excluding him from practice before that agency.

Membership

Cepican belonged to the Iowa State Bar Association and the American Bar Association. The Iowa State Bar Association is the professional organization of lawyers admitted to practice in Iowa. The American Bar Association, founded in 1878 in Saratoga Springs, New York, is the national professional organization of American lawyers and accredits law schools.

• Iowa State Bar Association , United States

• American Bar Association , United States

References

• Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. John E. Cepican Iowa Supreme Court opinion on a disciplinary complaint against Cepican, describing his admission to practice in 1974, his intellectual property practice, and the suspension of his license to practice law.
  2015