Overview
Christopher M. King is a senior counsel and intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP. He is a member of the firm's Mechanical & Electromechanical Technologies Practice and the Food & Beverage and Manufacturing Industry Teams.
Christopher provides a broad range of intellectual property (IP) counseling services. His practice focuses on IP 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 IP-related due diligence for merger and acquisition activities.
Christopher is a trusted business advisor 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.
Christopher’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.
Christopher 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.
Christopher drafts and negotiates complex 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.
Christopher has performed substantial 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.
Experience
Christopher's representative matters include:
IP Due Diligence
- Served as counsel for Plantronics, Inc. (NYSE: PLT), a leading telephone headset maker, in its $2 billion cash and stock acquisition of Polycom Inc.
- Represented Novacap, a large Canadian-based private equity fund in its acquisition of Kingsdown Inc., a well-known mattress manufacturer in America
- Served as lead IP counsel and provided IP due diligence support for several acquisitions on behalf of a North American private equity firm
- Provided extensive intellectual property support to an investment in a medical services and software company on behalf of a private equity firm focused within the health care industry
Affiliations
Prior to entering law school, Christopher 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
Christopher 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, Christopher 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
Christopher 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.