Patent Opinions
- Provide strategic guidance and opinions to a company focused on developing and selling surgical tools. We continually help the company maintain its position in the market, producing, in one instance, 12 opinions related to 3 different product lines in a compressed timeframe.
- Conducted a freedom to operate assessment for a client which produces a clinical diagnostic product, essentially a lab-on-a-chip which provides for point of care testing for a wide range of infections. Most such tests have to be conducted at a central laboratory, which increases expense and causes a significant wait for results. The company's product allows treatment professionals to carry out testing on-site. We reviewed numerous third-party patents to advise the company that it had freedom to operate.
- Provided strategic guidance to a medical device manufacturer in relation to a new product launch. This involved a detailed evaluation of more than 50 patents, assessing them for invalidity and/or non-infringement, to ensure our client's new product would not be impacted by any of the patents. The company is planning a large surgical tool product launch and this freedom to operate project provided the clearance needed to comfortably go to market.
- Represent as primary patent counsel a leading supplier of injection molding equipment for the plastics industry. The company's equipment is used to produce packaging for beverages, medical devices, and consumer electronics, and includes closures and specialty thinwall packaging. The Mintz team helped the company to clear a newly-developed product for market, working to reduce the company’s overall risk by analyzing competitor patents and the complicated structure of the new product, in a highly compressed timeframe to enable timely launch of the product.
- Conduct freedom to operate study relating to personal care products for consumer products division of global manufacturing company
- Conducted a broad scope due diligence for a medical device manufacturer as it considered investing in a company operating in the electrical nerve stimulation space. This effort involved understanding the technology and the details of future, to-be-developed products. It was necessary to assess the potential for the company to have freedom to market these future products. In doing so, detailed evaluations of some patents were necessary. Our study also assessed the quality of the patent protection in place at the investee, with the goal of determining the effectiveness of the portfolio to prevent third parties from successfully marketing competing technology. We ultimately advised our client that the target company had clearance to operate and the client made the investment.
- Conduct freedom to operate and invalidity studies relating to various surgically implanted products, and perform due diligence on potential acquisition of a competing surgical implant company.
- Conducting an infringement and validity study of a competitor patent portfolio on behalf of a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company innovating in the transdermal drug delivery space.
Case Study
Mintz conducted a comprehensive analysis of a portfolio held by a competitor in relation to our client's products. The team identified a number of weaknesses in the portfolio, ultimately advising the client that based on multiple issues associated with each patent they could maintain production and distribution of their products.