Overview
Christopher M. King is a senior counsel and intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP. He is a member of the Mechanical & Electromechanical Technologies Practice and the Food & Beverage and Manufacturing Industry Teams.
Mr. King’s intellectual property counseling practice focuses on intellectual property protection strategies and portfolio management, securing patent protection by drafting and prosecuting patent applications, assisting clients in avoiding competitors’ patents by performing non-infringement and validity analyses and preparing patent opinions, drafting and negotiating agreements that involve intellectual property rights, and performing intellectual property-related due diligence for merger and acquisition activities.
Mr. King provides counsel to clients in numerous industries, including power generation, engines, hand tools and other consumer products, food service equipment, medical devices, and automotive manufacturing. He helps his clients identify and develop the appropriate strategy to protect their innovations and other intellectual property in order to further the goals of their business.
Mr. King’s patent drafting and prosecution practice includes experience with utility and design patents in the United States and abroad. He regularly expedites patent prosecution at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office using the Track 1 application program or the Patent Prosecution Highway.
Mr. King prepares patent opinions for clients seeking to determine the patentability of their innovations, to avoid the patents of potential competitors by analyzing the relevant patent landscape, and to establish noninfringement and invalidity positions for third party patents that pose potential infringement risks.
Mr. King drafts and negotiates commercial agreements with significant intellectual property aspects, including joint development agreements, licensing agreements, design or development agreements, services agreements, non-disclosure agreements, and employment agreements.
Mr. King has performed IP-related due diligence for numerous clients in which he has analyzed global patent and trademark portfolios, negotiated the contents of the IP representations and warranties, prepared IP license and transfer agreements, and analyzed various licensing, joint development, employee, and supplier agreements as they relate to intellectual property.
Affiliations
Mr. King currently serves on Marquette Law’s Recent Alumni committee.
Prior to entering law school, Mr. King was a manufacturing engineer with General Motors, where he supervised a department of skilled tradespersons. While in law school, he was a law clerk with Johnson Controls, where he contributed to the preparation of the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission reports.
Education
Mr. King earned his law degree, magna cum laude, from Marquette University Law School (J.D., 2009), where he served as a comment editor for the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review and served as a member of the Marquette Law Review. During law school, Mr. King was a law clerk for the Honorable Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (B.S., 2000) and was a member of both Tau Beta Pi (national engineering honor society) and Pi Tau Sigma (national mechanical engineering honor society).
Admissions
Mr. King is a registered patent attorney, admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is also admitted to practice in Wisconsin and before the Eastern District Court of Wisconsin.