Eric Gagnon is a retired publisher, training professional, consultant, and inventor, with a wide range of experience as an entrepreneur, business owner, and technology patent litigation and licensing specialist.

As an author, publisher, and editor, during the 1990’s Eric edited and published What’s on the Web, a TV Guide-style Internet directory, which was distributed by Sony and AT&T, and in bookstores nationwide. He is also the author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, and The CRM Field Marketing Handbook, two books which were adopted by the Business Marketing Association as its Certified Business Communicator professional certification program for business-to-business marketing professionals. Eric is also training director of the Business Marketing Institute, a provider of online training and certification services to business-to-business marketing professionals.

As an inventor, Gagnon was granted two early Internet patents relating to Web site access using multi-digit “jump codes,” the predecessor to today’s well-known QR codes seen in print advertising. Gagnon’s patents have been licensed to numerous companies, including many well-known global brands.

Additionally, Eric served as a consultant in the business-to-business, technology, and IT fields, working with companies of all sizes, from start-ups to large global corporations.

Eric has a BA in Business Administration from George Washington University. Upon graduation, he worked as a product development manager for Source Telecomputing Corp., the first consumer online service, during the early 1980s. During this time, he developed one of the first online user interface software systems for IBM and Apple personal computers, which were the predecessors to today’s Web browsers.

Born in Galax, VA, and raised in Silver Spring, MD, Eric has long-standing ties to the Shenandoah Valley area, where, for many years, his family spent weekends and summers in a house they built themselves close to the Massanutten mountains, outside of Strasburg.

Eric, and his wife of 38 years, Christina, have lived on Winchester Street in the Town of Warrenton for 23 years, where they spend their time living and working on house projects in their 1930-era Colonial Revival house in Warrenton’s Historic District.