Sandip H. Patel, Partner

Sandip Patel advises companies in the chemical and life sciences industries on all aspects of patent law. He is one of a small group of U.S. patent lawyers with extensive experience in all areas of patent law, including preparing and prosecuting patent applications, patent portfolio management, opinion counseling, inter partes practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, litigation in the federal courts, and participation in foreign opposition and litigation matters in Australia, China, Europe, and Japan. Clients particularly value this extraordinary breadth of experience in resolving their most complex patent issues.

After graduating from Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, Sandip joined the firm. There, a collection of the firm’s leading patent lawyers who were working at the cutting edge of the law and biotech and chemical sciences, trained him. As their apprentice, he learned how to write and prosecute patent applications in ways that strategically strengthened patent portfolios for multinational corporations such as BASF, BP Corporation, International Paper Company, Pfizer, and Raytheon Corporation, among many others. Sandip also learned how to draw out of inventors their discoveries. He worked with them to ensure their patents would offer a competitive advantage and withstand adversarial scrutiny and rigorous foreign opposition systems. Now, he pays it forward by working with junior lawyers at the firm to ensure they too learn these critically important skills.

Early in his career, Sandip learned the basics of patent litigation, including how to conduct discovery, position clients for advantageous dispute resolution, and how to prepare for and participate in federal court trials for companies such as Amgen and the Procter and Gamble Company. He also learned how to navigate the complex and often unwritten rules of Patent Office interferences, where he helped clients contend for patents on early cancer treatments, genetically modified plants, and innovations underlying many household consumer products. For more than two decades, he has successfully handled and led contested interferences for many of the companies listed above, and ACCO Brands, Gillette, Monsanto, Newell Rubbermaid, and Pharmacia & Upjohn, as well as smaller companies and universities.

Today he provides clients strategic counseling in all areas of patent law, with a particular focus on Patent Office (AIA) trials whose procedural rules were drawn from those used to administer interferences. And he has spent much of the past decade helping clients, including a Nobel Laureate, obtain a robust portfolio of patents worldwide on fundamental CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technologies. This includes counseling in multiple foreign oppositions and U.S. patent interferences. In these cases, and many others, he has benefited from cooperatively working with the best among his peers at other law firms in the U.S. and overseas.

The clients he advises are diverse and include specialty chemical companies, universities, start-ups, and a variety of large, multinational corporations focused on biotechnology, chemicals, or consumer products. While many of the clients he helps are not publicly affiliated with the firm, it’s not surprising that the strategic counseling he offers them is purposely shielded from the public eye. New clients find him through recommendations of the above-listed companies and others when they have a particularly challenging issue.

Sandip has a formal education in chemical engineering from Michigan State University (Go Green!), but his work has spanned the entire spectrum of engineering, chemical and life sciences. And through that experience, he has proven adept at quickly grasping diverse technologies and devising efficient intellectual property strategies that clients have used to achieve their business objectives. Sandip also mentors junior lawyers and law school students, and shares his practical insights publicly, having written dozens of articles on various patent law topics.

Sandip’s peers and clients have recognized his legal work and his other successes in numerous attorney directories and awards, including Best Lawyers in America® (since 2016), Illinois Super Lawyers® (since 2013), an “IP Star” (since 2016) in the Managing Intellectual Property IP Stars Survey, a “Life Sciences Star” (since 2016) according to LMG Life Sciences, and a “Leading Lawyer” (since 2019) according to Law Bulletin Media’s Leading Lawyers division. Sandip was also named to the inaugural list of the Lawdragon 500 Leading Litigators in America in 2022 and has been named to that list each year since. He is thankful for this recognition and, more importantly, for the many clients who have sought his advice for over twenty years, such as Amgen, BASF, and Procter and Gamble. Furthermore, he remains a proud member of the firm, having previously chaired the attorney recruiting committee for ten years and later having served on the executive committee for six years.