Dunes^® CLE in Las Vegas

J. Matthew Buchanan is a registered patent attorney and of Counsel to Dunlap, Codding & Rogers, P.C., a national technology law firm headquartered in Oklahoma City with offices in Washington, D.C. and Northern Ohio. Mr. Buchanan focuses his practice on intellectual property issues confronted by start-up and established organizations in the medical and chemical arts, including pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology companies. He also assists clients with FDA-related regulatory matters and the development and use of intellectual property and regulatory-based competitive intelligence information.

Mr. Buchanan has a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology from The Ohio State University and a Master of Science degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the Medical College of Ohio. He earned his Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from the University of Toledo where he served as a Note and Comment Editor on the University of Toledo Law Review and became a member of the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates.

Prior to practicing law, Mr. Buchanan worked in various capacities in the medical device industry, gaining experience with the scientific and legal aspects of the regulatory approval processes in the United States and around the world. Prior to joining Dunlap, Codding & Rogers, he worked in his own intellectual property firm in Perrysburg, OH, in the medical device practice group of a large Washington, D.C. law firm where he focused on FDA regulatory law, and in a large Chicago intellectual property firm where he focused exclusively on patent law. Mr. Buchanan is admitted to practice in Michigan, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He is a member of the State Bar of Michigan, the Toledo Patent Law Association, the Licensing Executives Society, the American Bar Association, and the American Intellectual Property Association. Mr. Buchanan has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals on various topics, including immunology research and medical device regulatory and patent law.

Mr. Buchanan founded and maintains Promote the Progress, a legal blog focused on worldwide patent law and policy issues.

Douglas J. Sorocco is a registered patent attorney and partner with Dunlap Codding & Rogers, P.C., a national technology law firm headquartered in Oklahoma City with offices in Washington D.C. and Northern Ohio. Mr. Sorocco focuses his practice on intellectual property issues confronted by start-up and established organizations in the chemical and life sciences industries. He has extensive experience with academic institutions and issues involving federally funded research projects as well as competitive intelligence gathering and the development and implementation of strategic patenting initiatives. Mr. Sorocco also has knowledge in the software and information networking industries and, prior to attending law school, worked in the Indianapolis offices of Ernst & Young as an MIS/IT consultant. He founded and is the editor of PHOSITA, a legal blog focused on topical and informational news dealing with intellectual property.

Mr. Sorocco has a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Butler University (Indianapolis, Indiana). He earned his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Dayton (Dayton, Ohio) and spent a year as a visiting student at Northwestern University School of Law (Chicago, Illinois). He is an adjunct professor at the Oklahoma City University School of Law and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and currently serves as the Chairman of the Spina Bifida Association of America and the Oklahoma Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society.

Mr. Sorocco is admitted to practice in Oklahoma, Illinois and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.

Robert Ryan Morishita is a founder of the Morishita Law Firm. Robert Ryan Morishita earned a B.S. degree, magna cum laude, in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah in 1995. While an undergraduate, Ryan was inducted into the Pi Tau Sigma mechanical engineering honor society and the Golden Key National Honor Society. Ryan earned a J.D. degree from the University of Utah College of Law in 1998 and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. While attending law school, Ryan was a staff member of the Utah Law Review and authored Patent Infringement After GATT: What is an Offer to Sell?, 1997 Utah Law Rev. 905.

Ryan is a member of the state bars of Nevada and Utah. Ryan is also a registered patent attorney. Ryan practices in the areas of domestic and international patent preparation and prosecution, trademark prosecution, copyright, and intellectual property litigation. Ryan has drafted and prosecuted patent applications in the art areas of mechanical devices, electrical devices, medical devices, casino games, electronic gaming machines, Internet business methods, sporting equipment, electrical control systems, and software. Ryan presented at CLE seminars on intellectual property and patent law for the State Bar of Nevada in 2002, 2003, and 2004 and has been a regular contributor to the Nevada chapter of INTA’s State Trademark and Unfair Competition Law treatise since 2000.

Mark A. Litman is the founder of Mark A. Litman & Associates. Mark earned a degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University and his J.D. from American University. Mark has worked as a U.S. Patent Examiner, Senior Intellectual Property Counsel for 3M, and as a Vice President for Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner and Kluth.

At 3M, Mark Litman was the primary attorney for five business units with annual sales exceeding 1 billion dollars, and three Research Laboratories/Research facilities. He has a broad range of technical expertise that has been developed with particular strengths in organic chemistry, material science, apparatus, gaming technology (including software and hardware for video gaming and table games) and imaging technology. The expertise in the imaging technologies includes both the physical materials disciplines (imaging media) as well as process technology, imaging apparatus, and software implementation. Imaging technologies include photography, electrophotography, digital imaging, NMR, sonograms, mass transfer imaging, X-ray, direct thermal, and other energy based systems, as well as the apparatus and processes (including software) utilized in the imaging systems. These disciplines have also required strong backgrounds in surfactants and antistatic agents (including fluorocarbons), polymer science (including expertise in polymerization techniques, polymer compositions, catalysis, crystalline morphology, and rheology) and coating technology. Technology base from private practice also includes extensive work with mechanical systems such as catheters, pacemakers, drug delivery systems (external and implantable), MR imaging systems, packaging materials, and agricultural processing. Over the past 15 years, over fifty applications on software and computer hardware have been written and prosecuted. Professional Expertise In addition to being a hands-on patent application writer and prosecutor, advanced skills in prosecution procedures and strategies world-wide have been developed. A unique range of experience has been acquired after five years as an Examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, twenty-four years of writing and prosecuting nearly one thousand patent applications in the U.S. and over four thousand applications internationally. Specialized practice includes more than one hundred successful U.S. P.T.O. Appeals, interference proceedings, and personal appearances at EPO hearings and EPO Appeals.

As the Group Attorney for the Imaging Group of 3M, professional duties included client counseling at the Division, Group and Sector level, creation of core technology patent strategies, the negotiation and drafting of licensing agreements (internationally, including the EPO, Japan, China, Canada and South America), joint venture agreements and infringement/validity opinions. Negotiations have been accomplished as the lead negotiator with the highest levels of management and counsel internationally. Work experience also includes active management of litigation as both in-house counsel and private practitioner.