Virtual Lunch & Learn: Patent Pitfalls: The Early Mistakes That Come Back to Bite You

Join us for a Virtual Lunch & Learn presented by Oliver Richards and Madelyn McCormick as they explore the common patent mistakes that early-stage companies make and how to avoid costly issues down the road. Most patent mistakes are cheap to avoid and expensive to fix. The trouble is that the fixing usually happens years later, in a licensing dispute, a due-diligence review, or a courtroom, long after the startup that made the mistake has moved on. This session looks at the most common patent errors early-stage companies make, from public disclosures that quietly forfeit foreign rights, to ownership and inventorship gaps, to provisional applications that don’t actually protect what the founders think they do.

Rather than a checklist of best practices, the talk works backward from how these mistakes surface once a patent is challenged or enforced, from the vantage point of a patent litigator who spends his days on the consequences. Attendees will leave with a practical sense of which early decisions actually matter, which ones are recoverable, and where a modest investment of attention up front saves a great deal of money and heartburn later.

Speakers: Oliver Richards and Madelyn McCormick

Oliver Richards is a patent lawyer who focuses on appellate and complex patent litigation, representing companies across a broad range of technologies, including biotechnology. He regularly argues cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and advises companies on complex intellectual property matters, including patent disputes, licensing, and enforcement.

After graduating from NYU School of Law with the Walter J. Derenberg Prize for outstanding achievement in intellectual property law, Oliver served as a law clerk for the Honorable Timothy B. Dyk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. His experience helping companies navigate challenging IP issues provides valuable insight into the patent decisions that can impact early-stage companies.

Madelyn McCormick is a patent litigator at Fish & Richardson who represents pharmaceutical, biomedical, medical device, and life sciences companies in patent, trade secret, and technology-related disputes. She focuses on pharmaceutical and biosimilar litigation, as well as biomedical patent matters, helping clients develop strategies to protect and defend their innovations.

Before becoming an attorney, Madelyn earned a degree in biomedical engineering and worked in industry and academia as a lab assistant, technical consultant, and researcher. Her background in life sciences allows her to understand complex technologies and translate them into clear legal strategies.

This program was organized by Oregon Bioscience Incubator. https://www.otradi.org/