Mika Reiner Mayer

The mainstay of Mayer’s practice is counseling and strategizing with hundreds of life-science companies about their patent portfolios, including planning new patents and getting those patents granted.

She also conducts patent due diligence reviews for venture capitalists and investors into the patent portfolios of other companies. Last year, that side of her practice was a whirlwind.

“There was never a time period within the last 12 months that we didn’t have multiple due diligences running,” Mayer said.

For those reviews, she hunts for problems such as whether the investment or acquisition target has patents on its technology that might be susceptible to infringement claims.

That often requires checking thousands of other companies’ patents and applications for potential conflicts, usually under great time pressure.

To her, that’s fun. “We’re in a very unique position to look at other people’s work product over and over again,” allowing them to learn from others’ mistakes, she said. “So it makes us better lawyers.”

On the patent prosecution side of her practice, she does more for her clients than write patent applications and guide them through the patent office. She helps the clients plan and build their patent portfolios.

“It’s very important on the front end to think very strategically and proactively about how to layer protection,” Mayer said.

To that end, she gets involved early on. “We don’t wait for our clients to call us and say, ‘Oh, can you draft a patent application on X or Y,’” she said. “We want to understand every aspect of the company’s business so we can get ahead of any potential patent files.”

Her clients include companies creating or selling pharmaceuticals, medical devices and vaccines. She also represents businesses in the booming area of cannabis-related products, such as Demetrix Inc., which is using modified yeast cells to produce high yields of cannabinoids.

Many companies hire Mayer when all they have is an idea. RefleXion Medical Inc. was “just two guys graduating from Stanford,” she said.

A decade later, the company has more than 120 patents worldwide to protect the methods and procedures those guys invented for “biologically guided radiation therapy” that pinpoints radiation precisely at tumor cells in real time.

“We’ve got all of that stuff covered,” Mayer said.

— Don DeBenedictis