Allison Dobson

Allison W. Dobson focuses her practice on patent prosecution and counseling, due diligence, post-grant proceedings such as Inter Partes Review (IPR), litigation, licensing, and other intellectual property issues. She has experience with a wide range of technologies including biotechnology, medical devices, and pharmaceutical innovations, as well as other matters in chemistry and life sciences.

Dr. Dobson prosecutes patents for clients in the U.S. and abroad and provides counseling and opinions regarding patentability, patent validity, infringement, and freedom-to-operate. She also has IPR experience from both patent owner and petitioner perspectives.

Prior to her legal career, Dr. Dobson conducted research in the medical sciences, including molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, cell biology, and toxicology. Dr. Dobson also took Medical Gross Anatomy and later taught Anatomy & Physiology to pre-medical students as Assistant Professor of Biology at Winston-Salem State University.

She was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Neurotoxicology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a legal Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Genomics and Society at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Dr. Dobson has authored and co-authored publications on a broad range of scientific and legal topics.

Experience:

• Counsel a nonprofit research and teaching hospital regarding freedom-to-operate issues, including investigation and analysis of potentially relevant intellectual property and analysis of proposed assays intended to design around numerous patents.
• Represent Wake Forest University Health Sciences in preparing and prosecuting numerous U.S. and international patent applications, including applications relating to cancer diagnostics and/or treatment, the treatment of neuronal dysfunction. For example, patents have been granted for methods to prevent neurodegeneration, to detect elevated MAP-2 in melanoma, and the use of angiotensin antagonists to treat cancer. Also, the firm assisted with patent license counseling and negotiation, inventorship disputes, and inter-university agreement negotiations.
• Represent a leading clinical laboratory services provider in intellectual property related services, including freedom to operate analyses, patent license negotiation and review, collaborative research and development agreement preparation and analysis, patent prosecution and litigation services and due diligence and pre-litigation counseling. Technologies include clinical diagnostic services; robotics; bioinformatics; genome mapping; genetic testing; gene mapping and counseling; companion diagnostics; blood testing services, and biotechnology.

Education:

• University of North Carolina School of Law, J.D. (2009) Gressman-Pollitt Award for Oral Advocacy; The Order of Barristers
• University of South Alabama College of Medicine, Ph.D., Basic Medical Sciences (2001)
• Georgia Institute of Technology, B.S., Applied Biology (1996)

Admissions:

• North Carolina (2010)

Court Admissions:

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (2011)
• U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina (2012)