Mika Reiner Mayer

By the time Mayer moved to Cooley LLP in June 2016, she said she had no doubt it was the right place for her.

“Cooley has the best emerging life sciences practice in the world, and a significant percentage of my clients are emerging life science companies,” said Mayer, who is one of Silicon Valley’s go-to patent due diligence counsel for companies and their investors.

In her roughly one-year tenure, she’s led 30 investor-side and company-side due diligence reviews, including on behalf of Patricia Industries in its $640 million acquisition of LABORIE, which supplies pelvic health and gastrointestinal wellness products. It marks the largest exit in the medical device industry in the past five years, she said.

From a due diligence perspective, Mayer said the deal was fairly straightforward. She found the team at Patricia “was very rigorous and had a lot of enthusiasm, which was contagious.”

She advised Ciel Medical in patent prosecution and diligence matters surrounding its acquisition by Vyaire Medical, a respiratory care company, and advised MVM Life Sciences Partners in a $28 million investment round in Vertos Medical, a medical device manufacturer that sells instruments intended to treat lumbar spinal stenosis.

She advised on the IP aspects of initial public offerings for Establishment Labs S.A. and Verona Pharma plc.

Lately, Mayer said, she’s been seeing a lot of startups “with visions of helping people live longer or healthier lives,” and has been dedicating significant time to helping them establish and strategically build their IP portfolios.

While Mayer said different deal structures and size can impact how investors focus on risks, she said she has a go-to strategy for approaching due diligence, by investigating three main areas: the strength of her client’s patent position, infringement risks, and patent ownership issues.

With an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, and a innate fascination with science, Mayer said her area of practice is “a great fit.”

Looking to the future, Mayer said she’s excited to help define the patent landscape for novel technologies, like robot nurses and virtual reality surgical environments.

“There is a lot of uncertainty in the law regarding how these innovations can be protected with patents, and they are pushing the boundaries of law, science and ethics,” she said.

— Lila Seidman