Peter J. Davis Joins Whiteford Taylor & Preston
Baltimore - Whiteford, Taylor & Preston is delighted to announce that Peter J. Davis has joined the firm's Technology & Intellectual Property group as a partner.
The firm's managing partner, Martin T. Fletcher, said, "We are excited to welcome Peter to the firm. He has an international patent litigation, prosecution and interference practice that is a great fit with our existing practice.
Whiteford has the largest group of IP lawyers in Maryland, so we can offer him a great team of compatible colleagues. Additionally, his life sciences, product manufacturing and cyber security experience will add important strength to our growing practices in those areas."
Mr. Davis commented, "As a longtime resident of Maryland, I'm very pleased and excited to have found such a strong and sophisticated intellectual property practice in my own backyard. From the point of view of my national and international clients, it makes no difference whether I'm in Baltimore or Washington, but being in Baltimore will give me back several hours a day that I've been spending in commuting. I'm looking forward to putting that time to good use, working with Steve Tiller, Greg Stone, Keith Moulsdale and the rest of the Whiteford IP team, doing what I love to do best: working with scientists, engineers and business people to find the best ways to protect and exploit their inventions and innovations."
Mr. Davis joins the firm from Morrison & Foerster, where he was a partner and had practiced for ten years. He started his patent career as a patent examiner with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, and then spent nine years with Fulbright & Jaworski before joining Morrison & Foerster.
He has a broad intellectual property practice, focusing on patent prosecution, patent litigation and strategic patent counseling, but also including trademark and copyright prosecution and litigation, as well as trade secret counseling and litigation. In his strategic patent counseling practice, he advises clients on the validity/invalidity, infringement/non-infringement, and unenforceability of U.S. patents, as well as on various IP strategies, including invention mining, technology monetization, patent licensing/cross-licensing and developing defensive patent portfolios. In this regard, Mr. Davis has developed a proprietary patent landscape product which allows clients to easily identify, view, and navigate among any number of patents that relate to a particular business or technology.
A significant portion of his practice is also focused on advising and assisting clients with respect to the intellectual property aspects of business transactions, including conducting intellectual property due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, and advising on the IP aspects of joint venture agreements, confidentiality agreements, license agreements, vendor agreements and employment agreements. He has also advised clients and assisted clients with the development of in-house patent departments, patent policies and patent documents for companies that were developing new patent programs or improving existing patent departments.
In addition to his prosecution and counseling experience, Mr. Davis has extensive patent litigation experience, representing numerous local and international interests in bet-the-company patent litigations in federal district courts across the U.S.
His industry experience is broad and varied, ranging from biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, to materials science, electronics, microlithography, optics, heavy machinery, digital media, software, internet applications, network security, and business methods.
Mr. Davis received his J.D. from the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in 1993, and his A.B. in biology from Cornell University in 1987, where he also pursued extensive coursework in physics and mechanical engineering. He is a member of the Maryland and D.C. bars and a registered patent attorney, as well as being admitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Davis lives in Crownsville, Maryland, and is the father of four.
The 150 attorneys at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston are dedicated to helping our clients achieve their business goals through strategic legal counsel. We serve our clients across the nation and around the globe, wherever their business takes us, from our base of six offices in the mid-Atlantic region.