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Mercedes K. Meyer, Ph.D., a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group, strategizes with her biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients on their patent portfolio development and maintenance. She has an extensive biotechnology and pharmaceutical patent prosecution practice.
She drafts and prosecutes U.S. utility and provisional patent applications, as well as oversees their foreign counterpart applications. She advises on biotechnology related bioethics issues, such as tissue banking and stem cells. Mercedes also obtains patent term extensions related to FDA approval and Supplemental Protection Certificates (SPCs) and their equivalents abroad. She assists her clients to protect their rights over a wide range of biotechnology related areas including antibodies, proteins, viral vectors, genomics, vaccines, stem cell research, gene therapy, drug screening and identification, protein and tissue arrays, cancer therapeutics, cancer diagnostics and X-ray protein crystallography.
Mercedes offers her clients her significant and practical research experience in the area of retroviruses, including HIV-1, virology, molecular biology, cancer biology, immunology and protein chemistry.
Because of her Washington, D.C., location, Mercedes attends many of the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) Customer Partnership meetings and reports relevant issues to her clients. As a result of her activity with the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) and the USPTO Customer Partnership meetings, she has been invited to participate in USPTO focus groups to assist the USPTO in developing new rules and procedures. This access offers her clients timely updates on the rapidly changing rules and their impact on biotechnology companies.
In General. Mercedes received her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College in 1988 and her Ph.D. in virology from the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston and The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1994. She earned her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center in 1996. She is admitted to practice in Texas and the District of Columbia and registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Mercedes is an active member of AIPLA; she is the past chairperson of the Women in IP Law Committee (2005-2007) and current vice chair of the Biotechnology Committee. Mercedes is also a member of her firm’s Women’s Initiative Committee. | 