Design Patents and IPR: Challenging and Defending Validity at the PTAB

Ms. Durkin heads the firm’s Mechanical and Design Patent Group. With nearly 30 years of experience obtaining and enforcing IP rights, she has a deep understanding of utility and design patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Ms. Durkin has been an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University Law School and has spoken internationally on topics such as the interplay between design patents and trade dress, and protection of user interface and the user experience. She is currently a Vice Chair of the Industrial Designs Committee of IP Section of the ABA.

Ms. Horn combines her extensive knowledge of Patent Office practice with her experience as a patent litigator to help clients build, assert, and defend strategic portfolios of utility and design patents. She helps clients with patent prosecution, non-infringement and invalidity analyses, written opinions, and pre-litigation diligence as a patent agent upon registration before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). She maintains an active patent prosecution and counseling practice, assisting clients with building strategic portfolios of utility and design patents worldwide. She helps clients assert and defend patent infringement claims before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. district courts. Her technical experience spans a broad range of technologies.

Ms. Ferrill focuses her practice on all aspects of design patents, including prosecution, counseling, and litigation. She also has extensive experience in utility patent litigation in the areas of software- and hardware-related technologies. She counsels clients who hold design patents as well as those accused of infringement. She has experience with consumer and industrial products, graphical user interfaces and icons. She has prosecuted families of design patents before the USPTO, directed prosecution in foreign countries, and argued appeals before the PTAB.