Arthur Seidel; lawyer an expert on trademarks

Arthur H. Seidel, 89, an intellectual-property lawyer in Philadelphia, died Thursday, Aug. 16, of heart failure at Bryn Mawr Hospital. A longtime resident of Penn Valley, he had lived in recent years at the Quadrangle, the retirement community in Haverford.

In 2009, Mr. Seidel received the first outstanding-achievement award of the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association, according to the Drinker Biddle firm, where he had worked since 2001.

In 2008, Chambers USA, a lawyers' guide, named him one of its elder statesmen, his firm stated.

And in 2009, the Pennsylvania Bar Institute established the annual Arthur Seidel Distinguished Service Award, his daughter-in-law Miriam Seidel said.

Born in New York City, Mr. Seidel earned a bachelor's degree at City College of New York in 1942 and a master's in chemistry at the University of Michigan in 1943 while working nights as a hospital orderly.

In 1943, his daughter-in-law said, he joined a Columbia University research team working on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.

Mr. Seidel graduated from the law school of George Washington University. While there, he worked in the patent department of Gulf Oil Corp. from 1947 to his 1949 graduation.

He continued with Gulf in Pittsburgh until 1952, when he became a founding partner of the Philadelphia law firm Seidel, Gonda, Lavorgna & Monaco until it was absorbed in 2001 by Drinker Biddle.

Mr. Seidel was an intellectual-property lecturer at the law school of Temple University from 1973 to 1986 and a board member of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute from 1967 to 1975, his daughter-in-law said.

He was chairman from 1975 to 1994 of the American Law Institute-American Bar Association seminar on trademarks, copyrights, and unfair competition, and cochairman in 1995 of its seminar on patent law.

He was a senior author of books published by the American Law Institute for general practitioners - the sixth edition of Trademarks and Copyrights (1992), the fifth edition of Patent Law and Practice (1993), and the third edition of Trade Secrets and Employment Agreements (1995).

He was a board member of the National Affairs Patent, Trademark and Copyright Journal from 1978 to 1984.

Besides his daughter-in-law, Mr. Seidel is survived by his wife, Raquel; sons Stephen and Paul; a daughter, Mary Beth Seidel-Sharp; and five grandchildren.

Services were private.