Patent Prosecution & Counseling

Miles & Stockbridge offers a strong team of highly skilled patent practitioners with experience and applied knowledge in all phases of the patent process, including prosecution of individual patent applications, litigation, and instituting and defending post-grant challenges of patents.

The foundation of our success in securing patent protection for our clients is our well-planned patent process: Our patent lawyers first assess whether an invention is distinctive enough to receive patent office approval and whether the proposed claims are properly positioned against the competition—we then assess the invention’s strategic position in our client’s patent portfolio, advise on the use of design patents to secure additional product patent protection (where appropriate) and determine the best application procedure. We also perform freedom-to-operate analyses for possible infringement conflicts before clients attempt to introduce a new product or product family, and we offer guidance on how to circumvent any such possible conflicts while still gaining innovative advantage. Finally, we employ post-grant procedures (e.g., inter partes review, covered business method review, reexamination) to defeat infringement claims or to strengthen our clients’ own claims as needed.

We are keenly aware that today’s marketplace demands that our clients receive the maximum value for their investment in IP assets. Our lawyers excel at aligning those assets with their business and product development directions so that valuable IP budget allocations are deployed in the most effective manner possible. Ours is not a simple “wait for instructions and react” practice; in contrast, in many cases we are intrinsically involved with our clients’ management of their IP assets. We have developed strategic approaches, including a database-driven IP decision support system to help clients accomplish their business goals.