Lorna L. Tanner is a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP, where she counsels pharmaceutical, life science, and medical device clients on strategic issues relating to the development and management of their global intellectual property portfolios. Her practice focuses on preparing and prosecuting patents to ensure clients’ business objectives are met. She performs due diligence analyses on patent portfolios for financings, mergers, and acquisitions and renders opinions on infringement, inventorship, and freedom-to-operate. Ms Tanner is a member of the firm’s Chemical, Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Practice.
Ms. Tanner's technical emphasis is in pharmaceutically active small molecules, in clinical development with a primary focus on developing and executing patent strategies for late-stage and approved drugs. She has experience in a variety of other technologies, including: polymers in the context of embolic compositions and adhesives; drug delivery, including pulmonary, topical, and pharmaceutical formulations; biologics such as modified proteins and viruses; green technologies such as clean coal refining; and medical devices, including aesthetic devices, syringes, catheters and embolic coils.
In 2011, the Legal 500 recognized Ms. Tanner for her patent prosecution work.
Ms. Tanner and other Foley colleagues recently co-authored the treatise, America Invents Act: Law & Analysis (Wolters Kluwer 2012).
Ms. Tanner earned her law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law (J.D., 2002), where she was articles editor for the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley (B.S., chemistry, 1999).
Ms. Tanner is admitted to practice in California and before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Federal Circuit. She is also admitted to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.