By helping cutting-edge companies leverage their intellectual property (IP) assets into competitive advantages, Christopher McKenna combines his background in the technology industry with legal acumen to provide pragmatic and actionable advice.

As the Office Managing Partner in Boston, Chair for Cloud Computing Infrastructure and Solutions within our Innovative Technology sector, and former Co-Chair of the Electronics practice, Chris helps lead Foley & Lardner LLP’s efforts to assist clients with implementing their strategic plans.

Strategic IP Management

Chris focuses his practice on acting as an advisor to technology companies, helping identify, capture, and protect their most important IP. This bedrock forms the foundation that supports and drives products, competitive differentiators, and business value, and Chris formulates strategies to provide a framework for decisions regarding the development and maintenance of each asset. With a strategy first approach, he works to assure their continuous alignment with company’s business goals and commercialization efforts.

To assist with these goals, Chris leads large teams of attorneys, paralegals, and assistants on developing, executing, and managing patent portfolios in line with budget, quality, and scale. His teams handle all aspects including establishing core patents positions for startups, dynamic patent portfolio development for emerging companies, and worldwide patent portfolio management for established corporations. He also provides strategic counseling on the development and integration of patent portfolios obtained via merger and acquisition.

Chris also provides guidance on establishing business processes for companies to make IP part of a company’s culture. He encourages the use of strategic, systematic, collaborative, and lightweight processes for companies to apply well-informed business decision making to IP development and protection programs.

Commercialization

Outside of portfolio management, Chris also counsels companies on the legal, technical, and business issues of IP in various transactions and agreements, including vendor and contractor agreements, supplier, partner, reseller, and distribution agreements, terms of use, license agreements, master services and solution agreements, and joint development and collaboration agreements. His advice is targeted to maximize the clients IP footprint and to reduce the risk of leakage that can result from performance under such agreements. Chris also provides strategic counseling on data, viewing it through the IP lens through formulation of data governance models for the monetization and licensing of data.

Transaction Advisory and Litigation Support

Finally, Chris also counsels on IP aspects during transactions such as merger and acquisition deals, investments via venture capital or private equity, and assignment and purchase agreements. He helps perform due diligence on target assets as well as representing companies under due diligence or otherwise being postured for a transaction.

His experience with intellectual property litigation includes providing technical and patent support for complex patent infringement cases within the technology industry, trade secret misappropriation cases involving complex software and technology, and pre-litigation patent related counseling, including patent analysis, non-infringement, and infringement opinions.

Prior to joining Foley & Lardner, Chris held technical and executive roles at a number technology companies focusing on software and systems integration. Highlights include serving as the chief operations officer of a manufacturing software systems solution integrator for semiconductor, electronics, and medical device manufacturers and working as the director of professional services for an enterprise software company focused on manufacturers.