Intellectual Property
Across markets and diverse technologies, the more than 200 attorneys of Foley’s Intellectual Property Department deliver practical advice and services to help you uphold your IP rights and achieve your business goals.
At Foley, we take a holistic approach to your IP legal solutions, and focus on helping you meet your immediate and long-term IP needs. As the clients we serve thrive, our IP Practice also has grown over the years. We have consistently represented leading innovators and owners of valuable IP assets, including the top five U.S. patent owners for 2011.
The IP services we offer clients include: strategic IP management; patent and trademark prosecution; advertising clearance; licensing and collaborations; and IP due diligence to reexamination and post-grant review; opinions, enforcement, and litigation for patents; trademark, copyright, and advertising; and technology purchase and outsourcing agreements.
To support your profitable business growth, our IP attorneys can help you procure IP assets that:
- Keep the possibility of future enforcement in mind
- Take into account the strengths of your IP portfolio by ensuring that the products and services in question within your current IP portfolio are aligned with your business priorities
- Identify and mitigate competitive vulnerabilities
- Ensure that your future new products and services are being adequately protected
- Identify ways to increase speed and efficiency in procurement, such as strategic use of accelerated/expedited examination and patent prosecution highway (PPH) procedures, to help your company better adapt to the accelerated pace of innovation
Our IP attorneys are highly active in efforts to influence both U.S. and international IP law and policy, including the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. In addition, we have a history of effecting changes in IP law and USPTO policies through handling of precedent-setting test cases and active submission of written comments in response to the USPTO notices and proposed rules. We also have benefited from an exchange of talent with the USPTO through multiple decades.
We then leverage our collective experience, thought leadership, and knowledge of legislative, judicial, and procedural issues to provide you with counsel based on knowledge of key IP trends that will likely affect how you will grow and protect your IP portfolio.
We combine our technical backgrounds with our experience to provide clients like you with a full life cycle of IP services in industries as diverse as:
- Biotechnology and pharmaceutical
- Cleantech and alternative energy
- Nanotechnology
- Specialized chemical
- Medical devices
- Electronics, software, and high-tech
- Internet and e-commerce
- Wireless and wired communications
- Financial services
- Industrial manufacturing
- Consumer products
- Food & Beverage
- Retail
In addition, we provide you with unparalleled breadth and depth of experience with increasingly converging arrays of technologies to help you develop and protect your IP assets in areas such as:
- Biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, diagnostics, and regenerative medicine: Stem cell, personalized medicine, synthetic biology, molecular biology, endocrinology, genetic engineering, agricultural biotechnology, industrial biotechnology, biofuel, immunology, biochemistry, and vaccines
- Chemical, pharmaceutical, nanotechnology, and cleantech: Protein chemistry, chemical engineering, specialty chemicals, pharmaceutical chemistry and delivery systems, physical and natural products chemistry, organic/inorganic chemistry, agricultural chemistry and engineering process, photographic material and processing, and photovoltaic
- Electronics and mechanical: Medical devices, material sciences, semiconductor fabrication, semiconductor circuit design, memory and logic system analysis, microprocessor system evaluation, electrolytic apparatus and processes, optical and fiber-optic system design, solid state gas sensors, and energy storage
- Communications, software, new media, and other content technologies: Business methods, diagnostics software, wireless and implantable devices, health care IT, computer programming, including business software, wired and wireless communications systems design, and online data privacy and security
While we offer you the in-depth services of an IP boutique, as a full-service firm, we are able to call on our colleagues to provide additional legal services that help you grow your business. We regularly collaborate with our colleagues in the fields of corporate transactions, private equity and venture capital, real estate, tax, FDA/regulatory, health care, public affairs, antitrust, and other litigation matters to offer fully integrated services to meet your ultimate business goals.