Dr. Richard (“Dick”) Thurston is the former Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Taiwan Semiconductor. While at TSMC, he assisted the company in developing its best-in-class intellectual property and trade secret promotion and protection program. Dick also managed TSMC’s compliance program and M&A activities including joint ventures & venture capital investments. He helped to establish TSMC’s best-in-class policies, protocols and procedures for semiconductor investments around the world.
Upon retiring from TSMC, Dr. Thurston has assumed a number of advisory roles and is Principal at RLT Global Consulting, LLC. Before joining TSMC, Dr. Thurston was a partner with Haynes and Boone. Previously, he had been the Regional Counsel, Asia Pacific, and Vice President, Corporate Staff, Assistant General Counsel at Texas Instruments (1984-1996), where he devoted significant efforts in: government relations in the semiconductor battles with adversarial countires; promoting and protecting TI’s intellectual property; corporate compliance; mergers and acquisitions; and international trade and investment, among other disciplines.
Dr. Thurston has written and lectured widely on international, transactional, and intellectual property matters, most recently on trade secret protection and the U.S Chips Act legislation and investment activities related to the funding under the Chips Act. In 2013, he was selected from 800 nominees as the ILO Asia-Pacific General Counsel of the Year. Dr. Thurston serves as the elected Town Supervisor of the Town of Wappinger, Dutchess County, NY. Dick is fluent in Mandarin.
