Medical Devices

Advances in science and technology have led to significant and continued growth in the medical device industry. Companies are heavily investing in research and development efforts, with the result being a steady stream of innovative medical products and solutions. As medical device innovation enables improved quality of life and quality of care for patients of all ages, medical device companies are seeing increased demands and increasing revenues. At the same time, medical device companies face a business landscape that is riskier and more challenging to navigate than ever before.

Through its medical devices practice, Sutherland attorneys have worked closely with medical technology pioneers to secure commercial platforms to advance their innovations with the potential to improve the lives and health of millions of people. Our attorneys understand that capitalizing on medical device innovation can involve multiple and varying areas of legal expertise. Sutherland has intellectual property, regulatory, corporate, tax and other attorneys with extensive experience in the medical device field, which enables us to take a multidisciplinary approach and assemble the right team of professionals for each client.

The majority of Sutherland’s intellectual property attorneys hold technical degrees in fields such as biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, medicine, cellular biology, chemistry, molecular genetics, and software and electrical engineering, which allow our attorneys to quickly understand our clients’ technologies and the scope of their intellectual property innovations. We also have experience with patents in a broad range of medical device technologies, including biomaterials; biosensors; transdermal and implantable drug delivery systems; nanofiber tissue engineering; and orthopedic, cardiovascular and neurological devices.

Applying Our Experience to Legal Services

Sutherland offers a broad range of legal services for clients involved in the development and commercialization of medical technology products. Our services include:

Patent drafting and U.S. and foreign patent prosecution;
Patentability analysis and opinions;
Patent infringement analysis and strategy counseling;
Product clearance and freedom to operate opinions;
Intellectual property due diligence;
Technology transfer, licensing and other cooperative research, commercialization and development agreements;
Complex intellectual property litigation and interferences;
Regulatory matters before agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Consumer Product Safety Commission;
Organization of corporations, partnerships and LLCs;
Angel, seed and venture capital financing;
Initial public offerings; and
Mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures.

Applying Our Experience to Help Our Clients

Sutherland’s attorneys work actively to help protect and commercialize the discoveries of our medical device clients, who range from research institutions to entrepreneurs to multinational companies. Some of the ways we have recently helped our clients include:

Creating a detailed patent landscape analysis for counseling a publicly traded electrical stimulation device manufacturer on patent clearance strategies;
Preparing and filing a number of patent applications on transdermal drug delivery device technology on behalf of a nationally known research university, which then was able to license the patent portfolio to a medical device company for commercialization;
Providing a medical device developer with patent clearance opinions concerning its proposed products for use in cardiac interventional procedures;
Helping a venture capital funded medical device company build an extensive patent portfolio to protect its implantable device platform for controlled drug delivery and biosensing;
Representing a pharmaceutical, diagnostic product and medical device developer in prosecuting patents related to implantable devices and methods for treating glaucoma and other eye diseases;
Prosecuting and successfully litigating a series of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) patents for a medical equipment manufacturer;
Completing a licensing transaction for the commercialization of a molecular diagnostics platform in multiple fields of use;
Handling Series A and Series B financing rounds for a start-up company that developed a range of cardiovascular devices;
Arranging a multimillion dollar private placement for a company that marketed stress reducing devices; and
Completing the acquisition of a company that manufactured and sold home plaque removal instruments.