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WRITER
I was born in Argentina, and raised in a family of European émigrés. I came to the U.S. to study, received my Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard, and then my law degree from George Washington University. It is this diverse mix of cultures, languages, and education that has defined my life as a scientist-attorney and my work as a writer. In the early 1980s I co-founded an intellectual property law firm in Washington DC, where, for forty years, I practiced law in the area of biotechnology patents. Many consider me one of the pioneers in the field, having won important law precedents, and written several articles at the edge of science and law. I am the author of U.S. Biotechnology Patent Law, a book on the legal fundamentals of the field, now in its 9th edition. I have taught and lectured all over the world, and received multiple awards.
My multicultural background has given me a keen sensitivity for the problems of disenfranchised and impoverished members of the developing world. As a consequence, I created a pro bono practice in my law firm that represents the intellectual property interests of Native Americans, whether from U.S. Indian Country or from South American tribes. One of my pro bono cases is described in my article, “Protecting rainforest-derived technology equitably,” WIPO Magazine, February 2019.
My personal writings include memoirs, blogs, fiction, and non-fiction narratives. My personal memoirs and essays pay particular attention to questions of identity, such as: Who are we? Who cares? Do we ignore our identity at our own risk? Do others care about our identity even if we don’t?
I have completed a professional memoir, entitled Patenting Life, Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology. It is a first-person narrative for lay readership, which, through professional stories and anecdotes, tells of the role of intellectual property in the rise of commercial biology in the 20th century. It is in production by Georgetown University Press. Advance sales will start later in 2024 with a target publication date in early 2025.
lawyer
For four and half decades, I have represented individuals, universities, and companies engaged in cutting-edge research in biotechnology. I have assisted them in protecting inventions, asserting their IP rights in court, defending them in lawsuits brought by others, and doing deals. I have lawyered, mediated, arbitrated, and litigated.
I am particularly proud of my pro bono work using IP rights to empower disenfranchised indigenous communities in the US, Colombia, and Peru. For this, in 2015, our pro bono team won the prestigious Financial Times' Most Innovative North American Lawyers award in the category of "Innovation in a Social Responsibility Project."
For more details about my work as an attorney and the professional awards I have received, please go to my law firm’s website.
teacher
Given my passion for coaching and mentoring, my teaching engagements have been a constant throughout my professional life. As a graduate student at Harvard, and for several years in a row, I won awards for “Excellence in the Teaching of Chemistry.” Since then, during the forty-five years of my professional career, I have presented hundreds of lectures on intellectual property law in the US, Canada, Europe, Israel, Latin America, and Asia.
One personally satisfying engagement, in that it took me back annually to my country of birth, was being an Invited Professor of Law at Austral University in Buenos Aires from 2012 to 2016. For those occasions, I translated my book US Biotech Patent Law into Spanish and lectured in my native language to students who were sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization. More recently I have taught and continue teaching a yearly course on biotechnology patent law at my law firm to all incoming legal professionals.