Overview
Melissa Patterson is an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group. Melissa spends her in-office time at the firm's San Diego (Del Mar), Washington D.C., and Silicon Valley offices.
Areas of Practice
Melissa focuses her practice on the preparation and prosecution of patent applications, licensing, and litigation matters, particularly in the areas of software, computer hardware, mobile communications, AI, robotics, and financial networks. She has prosecuted more than 1,000 U.S. and foreign patent matters, including acting as foreign counsel and working with foreign counterparts in other jurisdictions. In her IP licensing practice, Melissa analyzes current and former open source licensing terms and, with her ongoing computer programming expertise, opines on patent and licensing issues for her clients. Melissa has also assisted with over 200 trademark matters, conducted non-infringement and invalidity analyses for numerous IP litigation matters and assisted with patent licensing matters, and assisted with various technical aspects of patent litigation cases.
Experience
Experience
Representative Matters
- Prosecuted more than 1,000 U.S. and foreign patent matters for clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies
- Drafted in excess of 500 original patent applications, including conducting thorough invention disclosures and preparing claims, figures and specifications
- Patent prosecution included various technical and business art units with the USPTO
- Reviewed current and former open source licensing terms to draft plain language strategies for clients’ to discuss with their internal programming departments
- Drafted strategies for working with data use restrictions in view of open source licensing restrictions for various commercial uses
Honors
Honors
Ones to Watch - Intellectual Property Law, Best Lawyers, 2023
Group Recognition, Intellectual Property Law Section SDCBA, for Variety of New Lawyer Content, San Diego County Bar Association, 2021
Group Recognition, Intellectual Property Law Section SDCBA, for Commitment to New Lawyers, San Diego County Bar Association, 2019
Insights
Articles
Intellectual Property Law Blog Posts
- "Key Rules and Cases for Patent Practitioners Working on AI Patent Applications," October 11, 2022
- "Takeaways From the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies Partnership Series – Part Two of Three," October 4, 2022
- "Takeaways From the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies Partnership Series – Part One of Three," September 29, 2022
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"COVID-19 Web-Based IP Platform to Facilitate Connections," May 19, 2020
Speaking Engagements
- Panelist, "10 Year Review of ICS," University of California, Irvine, April 20, 2023
- Panelist, "5 Things Every Engineer/Programmer Needs to Know About Patents," University of California, Irvine, April 12, 2023
- Moderator, "Patent Practice Foreign Filing and Prosecution Tips," San Diego County Bar Association, December 15, 2022
- Moderator, "AI/ML: Myth or Reality?" Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association's Washington in the West Conference, June 23, 2022
- Panelist, "UC Irvine ICS Alumni Lunch & Learn: Intellectual Property Strategy for Software," ICS Alumni Chapter's Lunch & Learn, April 9, 2021
- Panelist, “Roundtable: How to Get Into Intellectual Property Practice with Any Background,” San Diego County Bar Association, Webinar, March 4, 2021
- Moderator, "Innovation in the Age of COVID-19," San Diego County Bar Association Virtual Roundtable, May 19, 2020
Memberships
Memberships
Executive Committee Member and Former Chair, Intellectual Property Law Section, San Diego County Bar Association
Practices
Industries
Education
J.D., Loyola University, 2011
B.S., Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, 2003
Ongoing Technical Certifications
-
IT Fundamentals for Cybersecurity. IBM on Coursera, 2020
- Machine Learning, Stanford University on Coursera, 2018
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning, deeplearning.ai on Coursera, 2019
Admissions
- California
- U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office