Judy M. Mohr

What intrigues Mohr about her work is the need for constant learning to keep pace with the progression of her career. It seems, she said, that “as you become more experienced, you just know less.”

Thirty years ago, Mohr was a chemical engineer with a Ph.D. working on pharmaceutical formulations when a patent law boutique hired her as a patent agent. She prosecuted patents for eight years before deciding to become a lawyer herself.

“When my youngest daughter started kindergarten, I started law school,” she said.

As an attorney, she focused on patent prosecution and its complexities and on managing clients’ patent portfolios.

Over the last eight to 10 years, however, a growing share of her work has involved business transactions. “You learn a little bit about licensing agreements and pretty soon you learn a little more and a little bit more,” she said.

These days, she said, as much as 70 percent of her time is devoted to analyzing the intellectual property assets of companies that her clients might want to acquire, invest in or partner with.

One of the biggest deals she has worked on was Quidel Corp’s $6 billion acquisition of Ortho Clinical Diagnostics Holdings plc in December. Mohr handled IP-related due diligence for Quidel, including licensing, supply and development agreements. That involved examining when Ortho’s patents expired, what had been licensed away, possible competition in the marketplace and the overall impact of the change in corporate control, she said.

Mohr was very pleased in March when the FDA approved another client’s products. Corium Inc. makes a system that uses patches to precisely deliver medication through the patient’s skin to treat Alzheimer’s disease. She had written Corium’s very first patent application in 2016. Her work since included helping the company design its patent estates — figuring out which aspects of the overall invention should be separated out into individual patents.

She said Corium’s success was about the fifth time she had been able to shepherd a product from an idea to the first provisional patent and on to a launched product. “To be a part of that from start to launch is just great,” she said. “You feel lucky to have clients that are doing that.”

Mohr also is IP counsel for Heron Therapeutics Inc., which also has new ways to deliver medication into patients. One is a product that can be placed in surgical incisions to give patients extended-release pain relief precisely where needed, avoiding opiates.

She was working with a small company that was developing a kidney drug when the company was acquired by global giant Amgen, which brought the product to market. Mohr stayed on as counsel for that portfolio, meaning she helped file patents around the world.

“I think no matter how long I continue to practice law, I’m going to continue to learn and continue to do things that are stretching my boundaries a bit.”

– Don DeBenedictis