Dr. Melissa Harwood provides strategic intellectual property counseling to both private and public companies in the pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device industries. She works closely with licensing, litigation, corporate, and regulatory counsel to provide her clients with comprehensive IP representation. 

Melissa’s practice includes offensive and defensive patent strategy development, patent prosecution, opinion preparation, and patent due diligence for partnering deals, venture financings, public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. She provides patent counseling in support of products in all stages of development, from proof of concept to regulatory approval and product launch.

Melissa has significant experience litigating patent matters in federal court and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, including reexamination and inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. Prior to her legal career, she worked as a synthetic bench chemist for a life sciences company and a postdoctoral research scientist in the University of Washington’s Department of Chemistry.

Melissa frequently lectures at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and for the Practising Law Institute (PLI) on various intellectual property topics, including patent strategy and IP due diligence.