New York City / New Jersey · New York and New Jersey
Knechtel Law Group represents medical device companies before the USPTO nationwide from Carefree, Arizona. Companies on both sides of the Hudson can work with a patent attorney who is also a physician and engineer, without regard to where the firm sits.
New Jersey hosts a remarkable concentration of established medical technology operations. BD has its executive offices in Franklin Lakes. Integra LifeSciences opened its global headquarters in Princeton in 2019, with product lines in neurosurgery, skin regeneration, and reconstructive surgery. Johnson & Johnson MedTech maintains a campus in Raritan, a historic home of its Ethicon surgical business, and Stryker's Howmedica Osteonics operation in Mahwah designs and manufactures orthopaedic implants for joint replacement and trauma. For an emerging company, those neighbors are potential acquirers, licensees, and competitors all at once.
Across the river, much of New York City's device innovation starts inside academic medical centers. Hospital for Special Surgery created its Innovation Institute in 2016 to commercialize ideas from its orthopedic clinicians and staff. Mount Sinai Innovation Partners handles patenting and licensing for the Icahn School of Medicine, while Mount Sinai BioDesign, established in 2017, pairs clinical and engineering input on surgical technologies. Columbia's Biomedical Engineering Technology Accelerator, known as BiomedX, funds clinician-engineer teams developing devices and related software. In Hoboken, Stevens Institute of Technology's biomedical engineering program has students design and test medical devices with industry mentors.
BioNJ, New Jersey's life sciences trade association, connects start-ups with larger research-based companies and engages policymakers in Trenton and Washington. The region's court system also bears on strategy: the District of New Jersey adopted Local Patent Rules effective January 1, 2009, including a dedicated rule for pharmaceutical cases under the Hatch-Waxman framework, reflecting how often drug patent disputes are heard there.
For device companies, the patent consequences are practical. Clinician inventors at hospitals are usually bound by institutional IP policies, so ownership must be clear before a spinout raises money. Orthopedic and surgical categories are crowded, so claims should focus on the specific mechanism or workflow that is new. Companies developing drug-device combination products should expect that litigation over the drug component may follow pharmaceutical procedures rather than device norms. And because many teams work, hire, and contract in both states, confidentiality and assignment agreements should be written with both states' laws in view.
Patent Strategy Considerations
New Jersey enacted a trade secrets statute in 2012 modeled on the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, while New York protects trade secrets through common law. Companies with engineers, contract manufacturers, or investors in both states should draft confidentiality, invention assignment, and choice-of-law provisions deliberately, and decide early which innovations to patent and which to hold as know-how.
Surgeons and physicians affiliated with academic medical centers typically assign or share rights under institutional policies. Before filing, confirm who the inventors are, what the institution owns, and whether a license or assignment is needed, so that the patent application and the company's cap table rest on the same chain of title.
A product that pairs a device with a drug can draw its patent disputes into the District of New Jersey's Hatch-Waxman rule, which accelerates disclosure and contention deadlines. Portfolios for these products should separately claim the device mechanism, the delivery method, and the combination, and filings should be coordinated with the regulatory plan.
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 New York City / New Jersey-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 patent prosecution. Practice before the USPTO is federal, and a registered patent attorney can represent applicants anywhere in the United States. Matters governed by state law, such as employment agreements or state-court contract claims, and litigation in New York or New Jersey courts may require counsel admitted in that state, and we can work alongside local counsel when needed.
Confirm inventorship, identify any institutional ownership or revenue-sharing policy, and put a license or assignment in place. It is also important to review any abstracts, presentations, or grand-rounds talks, since public disclosure affects patentability, particularly outside the United States.
They set a structured timetable for contentions and claim construction, and a separate rule accelerates pharmaceutical cases. Companies with combination products, or with competitors and customers in New Jersey, benefit from drafting claims and keeping records with that framework in mind.
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