Laura Handley

Laura Handley is a Senior Counsel in the New York office of McKool Smith whose practice deals with intellectual property analysis and litigation.

Ms. Handley’s experience spans both in-house corporate positions and law firm positions and gives her a distinctly business-oriented approach to her clients’ litigation matters.  Prior to joining McKool Smith in April 2006, Ms. Handley was Vice President of Intellectual Property for Isis Pharmaceuticals in Carlsbad, California. At Isis, she headed a large patent department and directed all aspects of the company’s patent litigation, licensing and prosecution work, both in the United States and in Europe, for a patent portfolio exceeding one thousand issued patents.  Prior to Isis Pharmaceuticals, Ms. Handley was the sole attorney at biotechnology startup Arcaris Inc., and successfully closed an acquisition of Arcaris by genomics company Deltagen Inc.  Ms. Handley practiced patent analysis, prosecution and litigation at Cooley Godward LLP and at Weil Gotshal & Manges before joining Arcaris.

After earning her law degree, Ms. Handley served as a law clerk for Judge S. Jay Plager of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has exclusive jurisdiction over appeals of all patent cases.

Before entering law school, Ms. Handley worked as a scientist for Kodak Research Laboratories, where her research included synthetic organic chemistry and pharmaceutical research.

Representative Matters

• OPTi, Inc.  OPTi Inc. v. nVidia Corp.  Represented OPTi in a patent infringement case involving computer chipsets in the Eastern District of Texas.
• Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc.  Health Discovery Corporation v. Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc. Represented Ciphergen in the defense of allegations of patent infringement relating to bioinformatics in the proteomics and drug discovery fields.
• Ericsson Inc., Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications ( USA). In the Matter of: Certain Wireless Communication Equipment, Articles Therein, and Products Containing the Same (Inv. No. 337-TA-577) before the International Trade Commission (ITC) - involving numerous patents related to hardware and software for UMTS (i.e. 3G or WCDMA) wireless telecommunication devices including wireless infrastructure equipment, cellular telephones and error-control coding used therein.
• Candela Corporation.  Candela Corporation v. Palomar Medical Technologies, Inc.  Represented Candela in the Eastern District of Texas and tried through jury verdict a patent litigation involving laser-based medical devices.
• DigiScript, Inc.   Aspen Research, Ltd. v. DigiScript, Inc.  Represented DigiScript in the Eastern District of Texas through summary judgment phase in a patent infringement case involving multimedia-related business methods.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Magsil Inc.  Magsil v. Seagate et al.  Representing Plaintiffs in the District of Delaware in a multi-defendant patent infringement case involving magnetic tunnel junctions used in TMR heads for hard disk drives. 

Press Releases