How We Work

O&R builds strong patents for innovators. We are dyed-in-the-wool technologists with deep academic, industrial, and legal experience. Our sharp focus on patents means we quickly grasp the most complex technical nuances and commercial significance of our clients’ inventions and find the best path to patentability.

We focus on the whole client; we are ever-cognizant of the business environment in which our clients compete, and take the time to understand each client’s specific business goals and technologies so that we can guide them through the technological, commercial, and legal landscape. We are creative, work efficiently, understand the technology, and don’t waste our clients’ time. We focus on what is specifically important to each client’s situation so that the portfolios we build provide a durable competitive advantage.

We founded O&R Patent Law in 2007 to provide the highest quality, sophisticated intellectual property advice delivered with the personal service not found at other firms. We strive to be the patent law firm of choice for leading technology companies and top research institutions seeking a strategic approach to intellectual property portfolio planning.

Our focused approach adds significant value to our clients:

• We adapt to working with each client in ways that are most appropriate to their needs, be it brainstorming in front of a whiteboard, attending a design review, interviewing key inventors, or reviewing a detailed disclosure document, submitted journal article, or even source code.

• We are knowledgeable about patent protection in the United States and most major non-US jurisdictions and maintain relationships with foreign patent counsel so we can serve our clients’ intellectual property protection needs outside the United States.

• In addition to patent prosecution, we provide nuanced and actionable advice and support on a broad range of offensive and defensive patent strategies, including advising investors and potential acquirors of patent assets, and advising parties on avoiding, defending, or bringing litigation.

• We recognize that goals and circumstances surrounding every IP portfolio change over time, and we use our comprehensive knowledge of a client’s situation to anticipate and create IP assets that are robust and durable. We are as likely to advise against seeking patent protection, when it is not in the best interests of strengthening an overall portfolio, as to advise pursuing a patent.

• We are efficient, staffing projects with a collaborative team representing varied experience, while always maintaining ongoing involvement by our senior patent attorneys. Our experienced paralegals deal with procedural issues and are a direct and knowledgeable resource to our clients’ internal staff.

• Most of our legal staff have been on the other side of the table in prior engineering and in-house legal careers so we understand that the press of business or demands of the clinic or lab can make it difficult to make time to work on patents. We strive to keep our clients’ time investment minimal and meaningful.

• A key characteristic of our firm is that we have worked together for decades and are a high-functioning, coherent team that offers our clients the collective expertise of a team-based approach.

Our Services

Patent Strategy and Prosecution

O&R knows patents and how to build strategically significant portfolios. Our comprehensive and strategic approach to patent prosecution incorporates our industry experience and deep understanding of the technology, the competitive landscape, the prior art, and our clients’ goals so that the work we do provides a durable competitive advantage, from a client’s first cornerstone patent to their hundredth.

Opinions and Expert Insights

Clients trust our nuanced and unequivocal advice on a broad range of offensive and defensive patent situations. We play a central role in matters beyond traditional patent services. Investors, acquirors, and corporate or litigation counsel bring us in to provide our expert insights into a single or family of patents in the context of a transaction or litigation. We are more than patent prosecution experts.