International law firm McDermott Will & Emery announced today that Roger Kuan and Jason Novak have joined as partners in the Firm’s Intellectual Property (IP) Practice. Roger and Jason will be resident in the firm’s Silicon Valley office.

Roger and Jason focus on IP transactions including portfolio management and strategy as well as patent preparation, prosecution, counseling, licensing, FTO landscape and M&A IP Due Diligence. They have extensive experience providing IP counsel to clients in the life sciences and health arenas, including those in the personalized/precision medicine (e.g., genomic sequencing systems/platforms, computational genomics/bioinformatics, qPCR/dPCR, molecular diagnostics, etc.), digital health, life sciences tooling (e.g., biomanufacturing, fluorescence imaging/microscopy systems, flow cytometry, etc.), medical device and chemical, and food industries.

“Roger and Jason are an important part of the firm’s strategic growth in Life Sciences, fitting synergistically with McDermott’s market-leading health and intellectual property teams,” said Sarah Columbia, global head of McDermott’s Intellectual Property Practice. “We are particularly excited about the opportunities they present to enhance the firm’s patent capabilities in the digital health and precision medicine market.”

Roger and Jason spent several years serving as in-house IP Directors for a large diagnostics and biotechnology instruments company. In that capacity they were responsible for all IP-related matters for a variety of technology and instrumentation platforms related to genomic sequencing, bioinformatics, DNA amplification (e.g., qPCR, dPCR, epPCR, etc.) and biomanufacturing.

“While serving in house, Roger and Jason developed an impressive ability to counsel executives on every aspect of the IP life cycle,” said Bill Gaede, intellectual property litigator and partner-in-charge of McDermott’s Silicon Valley office. “Their unique perspective and business acumen will be a great complement to our current capabilities, and we are thrilled to welcome them to the team.”

Roger earned his JD from Santa Clara University and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Toxicology from UC Davis and a Masters of Science degree in Environmental Engineering (with an emphasis in Biochemical Engineering) from Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.

Jason earned his JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law and his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.

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