Robert Schaffer is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP and is based in the Firm’s New York office. Bob focuses his practice on IP litigation, counseling and management, including patent procurement, strategic planning and transactional advice, for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, computer software companies and new media firms. He regularly handles domestic and international patent and trademark portfolios and due diligence studies for clients, including major U.S. corporations and high-technology ventures.
Bob’s cases have included ANDA matters, complex U.S. Patent and Trademark Office interferences and inter partes reexaminations, and disputed patents in the internet and telecommunications fields. His work in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields includes advice and counsel concerning directed evolution of genes and proteins; combinatorial chemistry and drug design; nano-technology and microfabricated microfluidic devices; genomics and proteomics inventions; cancer treatments; vaccines and therapies for HIV, malaria, diabetes and other diseases; drugs and treatments for autoimmune, cardiac and neurological disorders; diagnostic and genetically engineered antigens and antibodies; transdermal, pulmonary and other drug delivery systems; industrial enzymes and high-throughput screening; and drug discovery technologies.
Bob’s work for software clients includes counseling for diverse products and inventions, such as new methods of doing business on the internet, digital rights management, streaming and data compression technologies, content delivery, distributed networking, caching and memory management software, security and encryption technologies, network security and diagnostics, software certificates and digital watermarking, anti-virus software, document management software and graphical user interfaces.
Bob is admitted to practice in New York and Connecticut and before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). He is a registered patent attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Representative Experience
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Strategic planning for major drug company in ANDA litigation
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High-profile CAFC appeal involving human growth hormone
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Successful declaratory judgment for a “big pharma” company concerning its next generation of one of the world's most widely used drugs
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Successful litigation concerning recombinant industrial enzymes
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Representation of a high-tech start-up in a dispute over its patented drug discovery technology
- Representation of a diagnostics and drug discovery company in litigation concerning genetically engineered antibodies and phage display technology
Education
- New York Law School, J.D., 1984
- New York University, M.F.A., 1983
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B., 1980
Languages Spoken
- English
- French
