David P. Hudyma, Jr., joined Cantor Colburn as a Partner after working at General Motors LLC for 17 years. His career there culminated as Senior Executive Counsel – Autonomous Vehicles, serving on the GM autonomous vehicle legal team. For six years he provided cross-functional leadership to address a broad range of complex legal, regulatory, and business issues arising from the design, development, sale, and safe commercial deployment of fully autonomous “driverless” vehicles by GM and its subsidiary Cruise LLC, and various partners and suppliers, for Cruise’s “robotaxi” fleet and for GM retail sale. He was closely integrated with the GM leadership, engineering, and purchasing teams responsible for developing AVs and the automated driving systems, software stack, related technologies (sensors, compute, silicon, telematics, etc.) and infrastructure (simulation, data, AI/ML, remote assist). Dave was a trusted business partner who provided creative, holistic legal solutions, frequently on aggressive timelines, to address unique legal and business issues, partner with tech start-ups, and collaborate with non-traditional suppliers to solve complex technical challenges.

Dave began his career at GM supporting GM Powertrain – Engines on the GM IP legal team. He earned additional responsibilities as intellectual property counsel to GM subsidiaries Nexteer Automotive, GM Components Holdings, Adam Opel A.G., and GM Powertrain – Europe. Dave held a variety of roles as Senior Executive Counsel – Intellectual Property for GM Product Development, including Vehicle Engineering, Active-Safety Systems, Urban Mobility, Customer Care and Aftersales, and various partnerships and joint ventures handling all manner of IP issues. He was the GM global subject matter expert on the benefits and risks of free and open source software (FOSS) and the associated licenses (Apache, BSD, CC, MIT, GPL, LGPL, etc.), and he successfully advocated for the creation of GM’s open source software review and compliance process that he jointly managed with engineering leadership. He led a re-imagining of GM’s global invention submission and patent process and kicked off a new design patent program, and worked with stakeholders to specify, source and migrate GM to a new docket, reporting, and finance system to implement the new processes.

A registered patent attorney, he has hands-on practical expertise handling matters associated with technology law and IP, including patent preparation and prosecution, portfolio management, copyrights and software – with a focus on free and open source software (FOSS) – data rights, and trade secrets, and handling associated agreements and transactions, including licenses, assignments, engineering services, joint development, NDAs, software, IT, and purchasing/sales. Dave is a skilled communicator able to advise clients on a broad range of matters, including post issuance patent proceedings, patent landscape, freedom to operate, and non-infringement opinions, and handling IP threats, non-practicing entities, standard essential patents, export control, international trade commission, and general legal issues associated with technology development, commercialization, and monetization.

Representative Matters

Professional Affiliations

Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO)