Woodcock Washburn is a leader in protecting intellectual property rights in the emerging nanotechnology field, which combines organic chemistry, biotechnology, materials science, semiconductor design, microfluidics, computer science, and other disciplines. The exciting advances in nanotechnology will positively affect nearly every technical field, from semiconductors and optical materials to medical imaging, and possibly will advance cancer detection, prevention and treatment.

Our firm is established as the premier provider of nanotech intellectual property patent protection in the Mid-Atlantic region, and we are actively growing our activities throughout the country. We currently handle nanotechnology-enabled inventions for corporate, university and government clients. Woodcock Washburn attorneys also represent several major multinational corporations in the areas of specialty chemicals and organic light-emitting diodes.

Nanotechnologists fabricate materials and devices by controlling structure at the atomic or molecular level. Accomplishing such "bottom-up" processing requires developing whole new manufacturing technologies that employ the controlled placement of atoms and molecules for a wide variety of applications, or relying on quantum-mechanical effects to generate a desired property. Our attorneys have counseled clients on nanotechnology-enabled inventions such as polymers, nanoparticles, quantum dots, semiconductor processing, carbon nanotubes, opto-electronic devices, solar-power devices, fuel cells, memory devices, DNA sequencing, medical imaging, micro- and nano-fluidic devices, microarrays, and biological and chemical sensors.

Woodcock Washburn lawyers have in-house technical and legal experience with Fortune 500 corporations and major U.S. research universities, including AT&T Bell Laboratories, the Rohm and Haas Co., the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, DuPont, and the University of Pennsylvania. All of our nanotech-capable attorneys hold doctorate or master's degrees in chemical engineering, organic chemistry, electrical engineering, physics, biochemistry or molecular biology. Several have worked in the semiconductor, optics and materials industry, and many are former scientists who publish and lecture extensively on nanotechnology, intellectual property protection, and business development.