Background
I have spent fifteen years building, running and selling businesses in some of the most heavily regulated corners of the American economy — healthcare practices, consumer lending, retail — where compliance is not a department but the operating system. Different industries; one discipline: get the corporate structure right, get the filing right, stage the money against milestones, and never let a client be surprised by a regulator.
I am the principal of Gatewell Group, a Los Angeles firm working the US restrictions on foreign-produced connected hardware — the FCC Covered List and the import, marketing and authorization rules that now govern it. I came to this work as an operator, not a lawyer — and arrived as a client first.
The Work
A regime that rewards one thing: command of the record.
When the United States restricts a category of connected hardware, the companies that survive the change are not the ones with the best lawyers. They are the ones who can document where their equipment actually comes from — to the component, to the supplier, to the production site — before a reviewing agency asks.
I work both sides of that gate.
I take a deliberately limited number of filing engagements each year, for manufacturers in Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Europe. Each is built to be granted rather than merely submitted: ownership traced to the beneficial-owner level, origin established per component, and a time-bound US manufacturing plan the reviewing agency can hold the applicant to.
On the other side, US importers, distributors, EPCs and project developers have to prove what they have already bought. I run vendor benches against the Commission's own records rather than supplier assurances, and keep the resulting origin files current as the rules move underneath them.
Both rest on the same instrument. I maintain the Register — a standing public reading of every Conditional Approval the Commission has published under this regime, current to the latest notice — because demonstrating the work is more persuasive than describing it.
Gatewell Group →Published Standards
The Gatewell Protocol for Origin Evidence
An open, free documentation standard for the question the regulations left undefined: what “sufficient evidence” of non-covered origin actually looks like. Three conformity levels and a public certification registry. Comment period on v1.0 runs through 31 October 2026.
Read the standard →The Conditional Approval Playbook
A briefing on the Covered List regime: the drone and router precedent, what an application actually contains, and a 90-day preparation sequence.
Read the briefing →Selected Writing
Published at gatewellgroup.com