Joseph D. Murphy began his law practice on the East Coast. Following a two-year clerkship with a federal district court judge, Mr. Murphy spent three years with a Wall Street law firm, gaining substantial experience in trademark licensing and patent litigation, as well as in securities, environmental, zoning, and employment litigation. Subsequently, he moved to a Washington, D.C.-based firm, where his practice concentrated in franchise litigation and counseling (again including substantial issues of trademark licensing). Since returning to Champaign-Urbana in 1994 to join Meyer Capel, he has focused his practice on a combination of intellectual property and telecommunications.

Mr. Murphy's intellectual property work includes counseling clients on copyright and trademark matters along and representing those clients in related litigation, particularly where those issues regard software and Internet applications. Since returning to Champaign, Mr. Murphy has litigated groundbreaking issues regarding the applicability of trademark principals to the Internet and has drafted several first-generation licenses for distributed application software. He has assisted in licensing a number of technologies from the University of Illinois and other institutions. In addition, he is a frequent speaker to entrepreneur groups seeking to understand the fundamentals of identifying, protecting and licensing intellectual property. He has also taught intellectual property as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law.

Mr. Murphy's telecommunications work includes the representation of small independent local telephone companies, competitive wireless carriers, competitive local wireline carriers, interexchange resellers and regional Bell companies. By way of example, Mr. Murphy has been counsel to one of the country's largest interexchange resellers (Associated Network Partners, Inc.) since its inception. In 2006, Mr. Murphy prevailed upon the Missouri Supreme Court to rule that exchange access charges could not be imposed on local wireless traffic. Alma Telephone Company v. AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., 183 S.W.3d 575 (2006). In 2004, Mr. Murphy successfully argued to the Illinois Supreme Court for a broad application of the Illinois universal service fund to all telephone lines served by independent telephone companies within the State. Harrisonville Telephone Company v. Illinois Commerce Commission, 2004 WL 2110511, 212 Ill. 2d 237, 817 N.E.2d 479, 288 Ill. Dec. 121 (2004). He was involved in the representation of SBC Communications in the Ameritech merger proceedings before the Illinois Commerce Commission in 1998-99. In addition, Mr. Murphy was deeply involved in the development of local number portability in Illinois and in the development of number pooling and the planning of area code relief both in Chicago and nationally. Mr. Murphy also represents a number of Internet service providers and advanced services providers, both within traditional telecommunications companies and outside of those companies.

Mr. Murphy has practiced in federal and state courts across the country. He is a member of the bars of the State of Illinois, State of New York and the District of Columbia, and of numerous federal courts. He received his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Boston College in 1982 after beginning his college career at Illinois State University and after spending a year abroad as a college exchange student in Nagoya, Japan. In 1985, he graduated cum laude in the top 5% of his law school class from the American University in Washington, D.C.

Joe and his wife, Kim, have two sons Cullyn and Quinn, and one daughter, Maeve.