Reviews

Great place to work.

A bunch of awesome

If you are looking for an experienced patent attorney fluent in both legal matters and a wide variety of life science disciplines with a very sharp mind consider getting in touch with Joe Hao, Ph.D., partner at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP. I met Joe in 2013 shortly after having founded a biotechnology company and keen on translating the company’s technology (bispecific antibodies) into a patent application. As a financially struggling entrepreneur and fairly inexperienced in the world of intellectual property, Joe’s offer of drafting a provisional patent application based on an SBIR grant application that was in the works at our initial meeting – for free – was very welcome. But it did not stop there. My company’s technology further substantiated and a PCT patent application was warranted. Money, or better the lack of enough of it, was still an issue. Fortunately, this did was not a road block. Joe helped out and conducted a substantial amount of work on a pro bono basis. Additionally, he instructed a bright assistant to participate in the drafting of the PCT application. Besides keeping the costs low, Joe was a great asset on the technical and strategic side. At least on one occasion he was informed about an idea whose implementation may have shifted the company’s focus to a completely different antibody concept. Even though scientifically appealing, it would not have fit well into the scope of the original invention and the risk of technical failure appeared high. Joe’s word of caution echoed in the form of a revision of the strategy and the re-focusing on the initial technology. Needless to say, without Joe’s clever strategic proposals and actions it would not have been possible for my company to eventually file the PCT application.