Joshua Louis Cohen

Joshua L. Cohen is a recognized expert in Intellectual Property (IP) law and practice. He has decades of experience working closely with clients to solve their toughest challenges at the intersection of business and IP. Joshua is deeply committed to serving his clients and nurturing long, trusted relationships. He also brings an entrepreneurial approach to his practice, including innovative strategies his clients use to develop strong IP positions as a natural result of their product and technology development efforts.

Joshua’s distinctive approach—which he implements for clients across industries and technologies—includes a framework for safeguarding technology and design innovations (protecting IP), avoiding IP risks (respecting IP of others), and generating new innovation (promoting new IP). With this framework, Joshua helps clients integrate specific IP actions into their structured product development processes, sustain IP practices across clients’ business operations, and foster a culture of IP awareness.

How Joshua Helps Clients 

Global and emerging companies entrust Joshua with all aspects of their IP. He helps them to safeguard their innovations, avoid IP risks, and generate new innovation. Put simply, Joshua collaborates with clients to protect, respect, and promote IP rights. 

Strategic IP Protection:  Joshua protects the technology and design innovations of his clients by securing commercially valuable patent, trademark, and trade secret rights; safeguarding clients’ brand equity, product differentiators, and the form of their innovative consumer products using design patent, trade dress and trademark rights; developing and maintaining strong yet lean portfolios of IP rights; and by strategic patenting of technologies in complex supply chains to leverage clients’ commercial advantages vis-à-vis competitors, upstream suppliers, and downstream customers.

Proactive Risk Management:  Joshua enables clients to respect the IP rights of others by proactively identifying and mitigating IP risks associated with product commercialization; assessing the scope, validity, and infringement of third-party patents; monitoring for IP rights secured by clients’ existing and emerging competitors; and conducting due diligence reviews of third-party IP rights and risks in IP-related transactions.

IP and Innovation Management:  Joshua promotes the creation of new product and technology innovations by fostering new product differentiation; training and educating clients’ IP, R&D, and product development professionals; harvesting competitive intelligence that informs clients’ product roadmaps and planning; implementing best practices for managing IP and innovation processes; and supporting IP managers as they advance their IP objectives and initiatives.

IP Integration:  To ensure that clients protect, respect, and promote IP rights as a natural byproduct of every product development effort, Joshua works with clients to integrate specific IP actions into their structured product development processes so that the right IP actions are completed at the right stages of product development.

A client’s specific business objective is my North Star—I never lose sight of it.

Acknowledged Leadership

Joshua co-chairs the firm’s Mechanical Practice Group in its Intellectual Property Section. He has also been appointed to leadership roles in the American Inns of Court—a lawyers’ organization chartered to advance professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence—including the Benjamin Franklin Inn (President Emeritus), the Linn Inn Alliance (Advisory Council), and the Tokyo Intellectual Property Inn (Executive Committee). Joshua has also been appointed to leadership roles in the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association (Board Governor) and the Product Development and Management Association (President Emeritus, Greater Philadelphia Chapter).

Awards and Recognition

Academic Awards

Farrington Award, Lehigh University

Editor-in-Chief of Law Review, Widener University School of Law

Outstanding Service Award, Widener University School of Law

Russell R. Levin Memorial Award, Widener University School of Law

Peer Recognition

The Best Lawyers in Pennsylvania®, Intellectual Property Law

The Best Lawyers in America®, Patent Law

What Clients Can Expect 

Joshua encourages a collaborative approach to the practice of IP law. In addition to his handling and oversight of utility and design patent procurement and IP counseling, Joshua works closely with clients to:

• Incorporate IP activities into clients’ product development processes, so that strong IP positions—including comprehensive protection and proactive risk management—are natural byproducts of every development effort;
• Establish IP awareness and a culture in which clients protect their IP rights, respect IP rights of others, and generate new IP rights through innovation; and
• Adopt and follow best practices for IP management so that they build and maintain strong yet lean portfolios of commercially meaningful patent and trademark rights.

Proof Points

Joshua is sought out by leading technology companies in the US, Asia and Europe to protect their product and process innovations, and he has helped leading brands—from luxury automobiles and timepieces to consumer electronics—to protect their innovative product designs. Having overseen the procurement of thousands of patents in the US and abroad, Joshua has helped his clients to build valuable IP portfolios.

Joshua is an Adjunct Professor in Lehigh University’s Master’s in Technical Entrepreneurship Program in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering & Applied Science. Among other topics, Joshua introduces students to IP strategies and best practices in the context of entrepreneurial ventures and new product and service innovation.

Joshua has authored several book chapters about IP law and strategy, including:

• Integrating IP Actions into NPD Processes:  Best Practices for Protecting New Product Innovations, Chapter Nine, The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development (4th Edition), The Product Development and Management Association and John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
• Law Meets Design: Transforming Valuable Designs into Powerful Assets, Chapter 14, Building Design Strategy: Using Design to Achieve Key Business Objectives, Thomas Lockwood, Design Management Institute (DMI) and Allworth Press
• Strategies for Creating a Strong Intellectual Property Position, Chapter 11, Creating the Perfect Design Brief: How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage, Peter L. Phillips, Allworth Press

Joshua has also been published in a number of conference proceedings, including:

• Sustaining the Global Competitive Advantage of Strategic Design Differentiation, Design2Business, Proceedings of the Tsinghua International Design Management Symposium - Innovation, Design, Management Across Cultures, Beijing, China (2009)
• Sustaining the Competitive Edge of Design Innovations: Strategies for Protecting the Fruits of Design Thinking in Postmodern Organizations, Proceedings of the International Design Management Institute (DMI) Education Conference - Design Thinking: New Challenges for Designers, Managers and Organizations, Cergy-Pointoise, France (2008)
• Integrated New Product Development: What’s Law Got To Do With It?  The Role of Legal Counsel in New Product Development, Proceedings of the 2005 Eastman Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) National Education Conference, Washington, DC (2005)

Joshua is also a frequent lecturer on topics of IP strategy, patent practice and design protection, including:

• Guest Lectures in graduate programs of Lehigh University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Thomas Jefferson University;
• Lectures at conferences of lawyers’ associations including the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), International Trademark Association (INTA), Pennsylvania Bar Institute (PBI), and Practicing Law Institute (PLI); and
• Lectures at industry conferences of the Center for Supply Chain Research at Lehigh (CSCRL), Design Management Institute (DMI), Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), and Product Development and Management Association (PDMA).

Joshua has conducted numerous training and Continuing Legal Education programs at the request of corporate IP managers, including:

• Strategic Patenting of AI-Related Inventions: US Patent Eligibility and Best Practices;
• Integration of Intellectual Property Strategy into Product Development Processes;
• Strategic Protection (and Deliberate Creation) of Product Design Innovations;
• Design Protection: Protecting the Form and Function of Product and Packaging Designs; and
• U.S. Protection of Trade Secrets and Prior User’s Rights