Service to Under-Resourced Inventors

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In 2024, Lars Gunnerson became the LegalCORPS volunteer and first Iowan patent attorney to receive heightened recognition from the USPTO for providing continued pro bono assistance to financially under-resourced inventors for four consecutive years.

Funding Startups That Change Our World

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Women are rarely funded when starting agriculture, medicine, and technology companies. In 2021, FIN Capital Investor Association launched as an angel investment group funding female-led startups in these areas.  Because of 20+ years of direct scientific, IP, regulatory, and business leadership experience, Cassie Edgar was recruited to lead as the angel investment group’s board Vice President. […]

Serving our Nation’s IP Interests

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Heidi Sease Nebel is serving a third term for the USDA on the PVP Advisory Board. The USDA PVP Advisory Board helps shape the country’s IP policy for plants through the Plant Variety Protection Act. She also serves as the Vice Chair of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Patent Public Advisory Committee […]

Drought-Resistant Turf Patents

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Drought-resistant turf requires up to 50% less water and has saved hundreds of southern California golf courses and uncounted lawns. MVS attorneys prosecuted plant patents PP35441 and PP35357 invented by UC Riverside’s Turfgrass Research & Extension program lead researcher Jim Baird.

CoAXium® Patent Changes How Farmers Produce Wheat

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Marketed as CoAXium® to farmers in North America, patent 9,578,880 is a herbicide resistant wheat licensed to United States chemical company Albaugh and Franco-Japanese seed producer Vilmorin-Mikado.  MVS attorneys wrote the license and conducted the trademark for the product invented by Michael Hal Ostlie, Scott Haley, Philip Westra, and Victoria Ashley Valdez.

Protecting CRISPR/Cas Genome Editing in Plant Systems

Penn State professor of plant pathology Yinong Yang’s multiplex RNA genome editing technology may produce gene therapy to correct defects that cause human diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis. He pioneers the successful use of CRISPR/Cas genome editing in plant systems, for which he filed an invention disclosure and a patent application in […]

SCOTUS Ruling Changes the Landscape of Patent Law

On December 10, our firm receives a favorable decision from the United States Supreme Court in an opinion heralded by many as the high court’s broad affirmation of the wide breadth and scope of patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In the matter, Ed Sease defended Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a DuPont corporation, involved […]

Transforming Business & Technology

In a cover story in May, MIT’s Technology Review magazine touts the biotech patent prosecuted by our firm (Heidi Sease Nebel). The author relates five patents that he concludes will “…transform business and technology…” One of these is United States patent 6,136,320 that we prosecuted on behalf of Prodigene, Inc. The patent relates to edible […]

Move to 801

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The firm moves to its present location, the 32nd floor of 801 Grand building.

Move to Ruan Center

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The law firm moves to the 24th floor of the Ruan Center in 1975 soon after Mike Voorhees (1970) and Ed Sease (1973) joined the firm.