Granite City High School
Class of 1947

Charles "Chuck" Hieken is a principal in the Boston Office of national intellectual property law firm Fish & Richardson P.C., whose predecessor represented Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison. His practice included numerous aspects of patents, trademarks, copyrights, proprietary information, related unfair competition and antitrust law. He has prosecuted over a thousand patent applications in a wide range of fields and numerous trademark applications.

He was President of the Boston Patent Law Association during its 50th year when Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark addressed its annual meeting honoring the Federal Judges. He was a member of President Carter's Advisory Committee on Industrial Innovation that recommended establishment of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals as the national appellate court for reviewing patent decisions. He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in American Law and The Best Lawyers in America in Intellectual Property Law. He is a Life Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a Privileged Member of the Illinois State Bar Association.

He nominated Dr. Andrew Alford, the inventor of Loran and person largely responsible for the aircraft instrument landing system (ILS) into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention of the Directional Localizer System used in the ILS. In awarding Dr. Alford an honorary degree, the citation from Ohio University said in substance that no person has contributed more to air safety than Dr. Alford. He also nominated Dr. C. Stark Draper, the father of inertial navigation, Dr. Harold E. Edgerton, the father of stroboscopy, and Dr. John C. Sheehan, the synthesizer of penicillin, into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

He was born in Granite City and resided there for his first 16 years. He attended George W. Niederinghaus School and Central Grade School. He attended Granite City High School for three years, receiving a final grade of A in all academic subjects. He was awarded his diploma in 1947 based on the education he had received in the United States Maritime Service (USMS) and Merchant Marine.

In August 1944, he enlisted in the USMS, the training organization for the Merchant Marine and was sent to Catalina Island for basic training. He had the highest mark on the mathematics examination for radio school and was transferred to Gallups Island, MA, for training as a Merchant Marine radio operator. He graduated in April 1945, and passed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) examination for a Radio Telegraph Operator license, eventually receiving FCC first-class radio telegraph and radio telephone licenses and a U.S. Coast Guard U.S. Merchant Marine Officer's license.

In April 1945 he sailed as a radio officer on the Escanaba Victory that discharged its cargo into ducks while at anchor off Okinawa, where the last fighting in World War II continued. After discharging its cargo, the Escanaba Victory sailed for Guadalcanal, celebrating V-J Day enroute, returning to Norfolk through the Panama Canal. He then made a number of trips to South and East Africa as a radio officer on ships of the American South African Line. In 1946 he passed an examination to serve as a radio officer on the S.S. AMERICA for its maiden post-war voyage and served on the AMERICA until September 1947, when he was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1949, he was admitted with five others to the Cooperative Course in Electrical Engineering with the Philco Corporation and met his lifelong friend, Dr. Amar G. Bose. In 1951 he and Dr. Bose worked on their Master's theses in the Philco color television research laboratory. He received the S.B.E.E. and S.M.E.E. degrees in 1952. At MIT, he was inducted into Tau Beta Pi, the honorary engineering society, Eta Kappa Nu, the honorary electrical engineering society, and Hexalpha, the honorary cooperative electrical engineering society.

He was offered admission to Harvard Law School in 1952. However, he was drafted into the Army and inducted in September 1952 after again serving as a radio officer on the AMERICA and a shore-to-ship radio operator in the Radiomarine Corporation of America shore station in Chatham, MA, during the Christmas holiday and summer vacation.

I n the Army after basic training, he worked in the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories, at Fort Monmouth, NJ, and in air navigation with Army Aviation at Monmouth County Airport. He was discharged in June 1954 and returned to MIT for additional graduate courses in electrical engineering. He entered Harvard Law School in 1954. While at Harvard Law School, he worked as a patent assistant at Laboratory for Electronics (LFE) and Fish, Richardson & Neave, the predecessor of his present law firm. At LFE, he made patented inventions in Doppler navigation and digital computer data storage systems.

In 1956, Dr. Bose and he worked on building and patenting Dr. Bose's spherical loudspeaker invention, spending many hours in the MIT anechoic chamber. Dr. Jerome Wiesner, then head of the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics and later Science Advisor to President Kennedy and MIT President, saw the speaker in Dr. Bose's office. Dr. Wiesner was interested in audio as a result of his work in audio in the Library of Congress in Washington and offered support for the 12-year research program Dr. Bose conducted at MIT in association with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra that led to the creation of the Bose 901 loudspeaker system. In 1964, Dr. Bose, Dr. Y.W. Lee, Dr. Bose's doctorate thesis advisor, and their statistical communication theory professor, and he were organizers of Bose Corporation.

His wife, Donna, a world-class flutist, and he have endowed the Hieken Professorship of Patent Law at Harvard Law School, the Donna Hieken Flute Chair at the New England Conservatory of Music, with the assistance of the Nicholas Foundation, and the Hieken Professorship of Business and Professional Ethics at Bentley College. Donna and he are the parents of two grown children and grandparents of four grandchildren.