Our growing practice assembles a cohesive team of professionals possessing the legal skills, education, technical knowledge and expertise necessary to effectively handle the IP challenges of our clients. It includes graduates of Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Vienna and Dartmouth College Our technical consultants are Ph.D. scientists with decades of both hands-on and upper-management experience in academia, and also in the cutting-edge biotech, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries.
Elizabeth Pawlak is the founder of Pawlak and Associates. She was introduced to patent law in the late 1980s by her friend and mentor, Dr. Bernard D. Saxe (now at Foley & Lardner and who was recently named to "Patent Hall of Fame"). With his inspiration, Dr. Pawlak went on to law school and received a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1992. She has been admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since 1990.
Dr. Pawlak has extensive experience handling all types of patent prosecution matters, including the preparation and prosecution of U.S. and International patent applications. During her previous affiliations with the Washington, DC intellectual property law firms of Armstrong & Nikaido, Sherman & Shalloway and Snyder & Associates she was listed as attorney of record on at least 200 U.S. patent applications in a wide range of technologies including, recombinant DNA technology, immuno- and bio-assay devices, vaccines, cosmetic compositions, polymers, colloids, SPECT and PET tomography, semiconductor fabrication and packaging arrangements, optics and lasers. Her expertise and experience also extends to complex prosecution matters, such as appeals to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, reexaminations, reissues, interferences, and protests.
Dr. Pawlak's scientific background covers medicine,
biotechnology. clinical diagnostics,
immunology, pharmacy, chemistry and physics. Specifically, before
entering the practice of patent law in 1989 at the Washington, D.C. intellectual
property law firm of Armstrong and Nikaido, she was a senior scientist and
a faculty member appointed at the Medical
School of Gdansk, the University of
Vienna, Yale University School of
Medicine,
Sandoz
GmbH and
Immunomedics in the areas of cancer research, developmental biology,
immunology and molecular biology. Dr. Pawlak has authored and co-authored
numerous scientific publications on gene splicing, double-stranded RNA (dsRNA),
cancer and neurobiology research, some of which have been cited,
as
"prior art" by patent examiners. The combination of this
uniquely broad scientific background, experience and expertise with her
similarly broad education and ability to adapt to the latest trends and
developments enable her to easily navigate through the complexities of many
dynamic and consistently evolving fields that blend together and lie at the
intersection of biotech, chemistry, physics and medicine.
In addition to of receiving a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center Dr. Pawlak graduated in the 1970s from the Medical University of Gdansk, Poland and the legendary University of Vienna, Austria with graduate degrees (summa cum laude) in pharmacy, laboratory medicine, medicine, molecular biology and biochemistry (In her spare time she won few gold medals in swimming and played piano in European student clubs.). She also holds a Doctor of Science degree (Dr.rer.nat., 1981) from the University of Vienna, Austria.
Dr. Pawlak is fluent in German, Russian, Polish and, of course, English, and reads technical and medical French and Latin.
"Scientists and engineers think that patent lawyers are lawyers. General law practitioners think that patent lawyers are scientists or engineers." Anonymous
