James V. Suggs is a partner with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP and serves as Chair of the firm’s Chemical Practice Group. Mr. Suggs concentrates in patent law, applying his broad technical experience in a wide variety of chemical, polymer, materials science, pharmaceutical, optical, photonic, semiconductor and related technologies.  He handles all facets of patent law, with an especial focus in patent procurement, strategic counseling, freedom-to-operate and due diligence opinions.  He also has an active inter partes review practice.

Mr. Suggs’s litigation experience includes federal district court and appellate practice as well as advocacy in forums such as the International Trade Commission, and spans a diverse range of technologies, including pharmaceuticals (ANDA litigation), medical devices, circuit boards and optically-based chemical sensors.  He has experience with all kinds of clients, from large multinational corporations, to science-based startups, to academic research institutions.

Mr. Suggs was previously a patent agent in the intellectual property department at Corning Incorporated, where he prepared and prosecuted patent applications in polymer and organic chemistry, glass, ceramics, photonics, and optical fiber technologies.

Before turning to patent law, Mr. Suggs was a Senior Scientist in the Science and Technology division at Corning Incorporated, where he developed device architectures and materials for polymer- and liquid crystal-based integrated optic devices for telecommunications, and on the research faculty at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, where he worked in the area of integrated optical chemical sensing technologies. He is named as an inventor on five issued U.S. patents.

In graduate school, Mr. Suggs focused on synthetic organic chemistry for pharmaceutical applications, where his graduate research focused on the synthesis of the bicyclic ketal core of the zaragozic acids. His undergraduate research related to the synthesis of trypanothione reductase inhibitors; and to mechanistic studies of the Claisen rearrangement.

“U.S. Patent Practice – What Every European Practitioner Should Understand,” Management Forum, biannually from 2011 – 2014

“Threshold Intellectual Property Issues for the Small Pharmaceutical Company,” ACS National Meeting, August, 2007

“Pharmaceutical Salts: Are They Patentable or Obvious in View of Recent Federal Circuit and Supreme Court Cases?,” ACS National Meeting, August, 2007