Atlanta · Georgia
Knechtel Law Group represents medical device companies before the USPTO nationwide from Carefree, Arizona. Atlanta teams bridging engineering and clinical medicine can work with a patent attorney who has trained in both.
Atlanta's device community grows out of a durable partnership between an engineering school and a medical school. The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering is jointly run by Georgia Tech's College of Engineering and the Emory University School of Medicine, and the collaboration has lasted more than two decades. The Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center at Georgia Tech adds a pediatric focus, pairing Georgia Tech engineers with clinicians on projects in areas such as sensors, wearables, orthopedics, and cardiac devices.
The region has a well-known example of that model reaching the market. CardioMEMS, built on Georgia Tech microsystems technology and co-founded by a cardiologist and a Georgia Tech engineering professor, developed a wireless pulmonary artery pressure sensor for heart failure monitoring; St. Jude Medical acquired the company after the system received FDA approval. On the licensing side, Emory's Office of Technology Transfer licensed magnetic stimulation research to Neuronetics in 2001, work that contributed to the NeuroStar therapy system. In Kennesaw, Artivion, known as CryoLife until 2022, develops cardiac and vascular surgical products.
Support for early-stage companies is concentrated around Midtown. The Global Center for Medical Innovation, a nonprofit Georgia Tech affiliate launched in 2012, provides device design and development services; its former preclinical testing arm, T3 Labs, was acquired by Veranex in 2023. The Advanced Technology Development Center, created by the Georgia General Assembly in 1980 and based in Technology Square, is Georgia Tech's start-up accelerator. Georgia Bio, which also operates as Georgia Life Sciences and was founded in 1989, is the state's life sciences trade association and includes medical devices within its scope.
Those strengths point to particular patent issues. Implantable sensors and remote monitoring systems split functions among the implant, an external reader, and software, which requires claims that a single competitor can be shown to infringe. Inventions from the Coulter partnership may involve both Georgia Tech and Emory, so ownership terms deserve early attention. Georgia's Restrictive Covenants Act, in effect since 2011, shapes how employers use non-compete and non-solicitation agreements, making invention assignment and confidentiality terms an important complement. And the Northern District of Georgia maintains its own patent local rules for cases filed there.
Patent Strategy Considerations
When an implant, an external device, a clinician portal, and a patient all perform different steps, method claims can be difficult to enforce against any one party. Portfolios for these systems should include claims directed to what a single manufacturer makes and sells, such as the implant, the reader, or the software, alongside system and method claims.
Projects from the joint biomedical engineering department or clinical collaborations can involve inventors employed by different institutions. Confirming inventorship and securing a coordinated license from each owner before financing prevents a gap in exclusivity that investors and acquirers will look for.
Georgia's Restrictive Covenants Act sets statutory rules for non-compete and non-solicitation provisions and allows courts to modify overbroad covenants. Device companies should still pair any such covenants with clear invention assignment and confidentiality agreements, which directly determine who owns what engineers create.
How Engagements Work
Knechtel Law Group is based in Carefree, Arizona. Patent prosecution and counseling before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is federal practice, and engagements with Atlanta-area companies are handled directly by senior counsel by video and in person as needed. Matters that turn on state law may call for local counsel.
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Not for USPTO matters. Patent prosecution is federal, and a registered patent attorney may represent applicants anywhere in the United States. Questions governed by Georgia law, such as restrictive covenants, and litigation in Georgia courts may call for counsel admitted in Georgia, and we can work with local counsel when needed.
Build a layered claim set: the implant's structure and function, the external reader or interrogation device, the data processing tied to that specific hardware, and the overall system. Claims that one company practices on its own are generally easier to enforce than claims whose steps are divided among the manufacturer, the physician, and the patient.
Yes. The court maintains Patent Local Rules, most recently updated in December 2022, that structure disclosures, contentions, and claim construction in patent cases filed there.
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