A Debate on Covid Patents and Global Patent Protection

Alexander D. Augst advises clients, particularly in the medical device and life sciences industries, on a variety of intellectual property issues, including worldwide patent portfolio development and strategy, patent prosecution, due diligence and freedom to operate analysis, and litigation support. Alexander helps clients identify strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities to minimize threats and maximize revenue using their patent portfolios.

Alexander prosecutes patent applications in various fields, including medical devices, biotechnology, diagnostics, image processing applications, computer systems and software, and mechanical devices. His patent experience spans every stage of a product’s life cycle, including post-grant proceedings, and patent portfolio strategies and development. Alexander performs patentability, validity, and freedom-to-operate assessments, provides pre-litigation assessment sand opinions regarding patentability, and conducts IP due diligence for strategic business transactions.

While earning his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, Alexander’s thesis work included building and running computational models of blood flow in arteries, based on ultrasound input data. After completing his doctorate, Alexander was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Langer Lab) and later at the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His postdoctoral work included generating bone-cartilage constructs from silk scaffolds and human bone marrow stromal cells, as well as studying cell-biomaterial interactions using alginate hydrogels.