Emerging Technology
We have worked with business and scientific leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in emerging technology since the early 1990s, including handling Dr. Sumio Iijima’s first carbon nanotube U.S. patent. Since then, we have counseled many emerging technology-based companies and developed and implemented comprehensive Intellectual Property strategies centered on some of the field’s fundamental building blocks, including carbon nanotubes, photo-voltaics, higher diamondoids, MEMS, NEMS, fuel cells and nanobio technologies, to name a few. Our attorneys have taken leadership positions in the emerging technology community. We founded both the Emerging Tech Forum and the MIT-Stanford-UC Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum, and are editors, advisors and contributors to many industry publications.
Our attorneys, including from our constituent IP specialty firm Burns, Doane, Swecker & Mathis, work together to give our emerging technology clients the range and depth of seasoned legal counseling they need to get the right start. We provide patent and trademark prosecution, defense and licensing, venture capital and corporate finance counseling, negotiation and documentation, tax advice, information technology transactional experience, licensing and commercial contract preparation and negotiation, government relations and government contracting capability, FDA and post-approval counseling and compliance, and immigration services.
Our multidisciplinary team includes IP lawyers and professionals with advanced academic and technical credentials from our Chemical, Materials Science, Electrical and Biotechnology IP Practice Groups. Many of our IP professionals are former patent examiners for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and many possess advanced degrees — including Ph.D.s — in scientific and technical disciplines. They serve clients in many areas of emerging technology, including clean tech, nanomaterials, nanoelectronics and nanobio, large molecule biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. They have the industry knowledge and experience to advise our clients about protecting and capitalizing on their innovations.
These technically trained and USPTO certified professionals team with experienced venture capital, finance, tax, technology, and transaction lawyers. They know how to discuss technology with inventors while advising management on financing strategies in this highly competitive and fast paced environment.
Intellectual Property
Our group’s experience and capability span the range of IP issues, including patent prosecution, enforcement and defense, interference proceedings, trademarks, copyrights, trade dress, trade secrets, licensing, technology transfer, and nondisclosure and non-compete agreements. Our mission is to help ensure that the value of client IP rights is established, maintained and enforced. We understand that our clients’ patents and other IP need to be protected and/or developed into market positions. Our attorneys help to secure our clients positions by creating and implementing licensing and other property utilization strategies. We work to create an optimal solution for a client’s particular needs that requires specialized knowledge of both the client’s technology and the business environment.
Venture Capital
Since the early 1980s, capital providers and emerging technology companies have turned to Buchanan. The firm’s depth of talent and experience make us a firm of choice for national, regional and local capital providers and for the emerging companies in which they invest.
Corporate Finance
Our lawyers’ understanding of the capital markets enables them to apply their technical knowledge in a practical and productive way to the needs of start up and early stage companies. We counsel emerging companies, investment bankers, investors and lenders at each stage of the capital formation process. When our lawyers represent emerging technology companies and their funders, they draw upon a wealth of personal experience and institutional knowledge in advising start-ups, growing businesses, large publicly traded and privately controlled corporations and Fortune 500 companies about public and private capital formation, mergers and acquisitions, structuring and restructuring, change of control, corporate governance, and executive compensation.
Tax
Our tax attorneys bring to the Emerging Technology team their command of federal and state tax planning strategies, legislative and government experience, and tax audit and taxpayer defense. They assist both established and emerging companies and their owners with the complex regulation of business and personal tax matters. We provide counsel as to the form of business entity and ownership structure of corporations, LLCs, joint venture relationships and partnerships as well as business combinations, separations, contractions, and mergers and acquisitions. We devise and implement strategies to minimize U.S. tax consequences on "outbound" transfers of property and to maximize deferral of U.S. tax on foreign earnings, and devise strategies for repatriation of U.S. earnings to minimize U.S. taxation.
Our attorneys also provide the services needed to design and prepare tax-qualified and nonqualified retirement plans, executive compensation programs, stock options, ESOP tax planning and the review of ongoing compliance of these plans with IRS rules.
Federal Government Relations and Government Contracting
Some emerging technology companies are looking for ways to tell their story to federal government officials and to bring their products to the attention of federal agencies. Our bipartisan team can support these initiatives with understanding of, and access to, executive and legislative branch decision makers. We assist major multinational corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations and small businesses that face challenging legislative concerns or seek to become a government contractor.
We can provide strategic client-specific lobbying plans, customized reports on proposed legislation and regulations; monitoring of legislative and executive activities, direct advocacy with government decision makers; drafting legislation; and testifying before legislative committees and regulatory hearings. We also provide education and assistance with the federal government procurement process.
FDA/Biotechnology
Lawyers in our food and drug practice are adept at providing counsel regarding legal, administrative, international and policy aspects of products regulated by the FDA.
We advise our clients on the requirements for obtaining FDA clearance to market products, including the bench, toxicological, preclinical, animal and clinical testing required. We also provide critical counseling to pharmaceutical clients in post-approval marketing compliance, drug reimbursement, and other post-approval requirements at the state level.
Product licensing and joint venture agreements are also an important part of doing business in this competitive industry. We provide economic and financial analysis of the products and markets and analyze the regulatory framework of the United States and the foreign countries required for the feasibility of the proposed agreement. We also review corporate licensing agreements and similar arrangements and coordinate the analysis and solution of tax, patent, trademark and other IP protection issues.
Immigration
With the increasing complexity of U.S. immigration laws and policies and tighter restrictions on visa availability for professional workers, immigration lawyers have become crucial advisors to clients working with emerging technology. As traditional visa alternatives grow scarce, our immigration attorneys take a creative approach to problem solving by looking for solutions to these obstacles faced by our domestic and international clients. We assist emerging technology companies in obtaining nonimmigrant and immigrant visas for researchers, executives and managers as well as world-renowned scientists who are at the forefront of the field and qualify for special consideration based upon their noteworthy accomplishments.