Raymond G. Arner
For almost 20 years, Ray Arner served as chief patent counsel to major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, managing and delivering a wide array of intellectual property legal services. He continues to counsel clients and provide these services in private practice. With over 30 years as both a consumer and provider of intellectual property legal services, Ray has developed a unique body of knowledge and practical experience. He is both a skilled tactician and a valued strategic and business partner.
Ray is frequently engaged to:
- Render opinions on the validity and enforceability and/or infringement or non-infringement of intellectual property rights
- Counsel clients on the steps they need to take to ensure freedom to practice
- Perform intellectual property audits
- License, acquire and divest intellectual property assets
- Negotiate intellectual property transactions associated with mergers and acquisitions, licenses, asset purchases and sales, and various collaborations and joint ventures
- Assist venture capital groups in devising strategies to protect their investment and to expand and enhance intellectual property portfolios relating to their new venture funding
- With such a substantial industry-relevant knowledge and experience base, Ray is also frequently engaged as an expert witness in patent and licensing disputes.
Three major focal points of Ray's intellectual property practice include:
- Evaluating the intellectual property content and potential arising from pharmaceutical and biotechnological research programs and collaborations, and constructing robust IP portfolios of lasting value to owners, stakeholders and investors around the products and technologies emanating from such research programs and collaborations.
- Counseling clients on freedom-to-operate issues as they relate to research and commercial activities.
- Formulating intellectual property policies, procedures and practices, and devising patent procurement strategies to protect inventions in the U.S. and abroad.
His counseling spans a broad universe of patent issues and technological fields, which include:
- Patent prosecution, opinions, strategic portfolio evaluation and management, licensing, due diligence, inventorship dispute resolution, patent litigation counseling, and patent oppositions and interferences.
- In the fields of: biotechnology, pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmaceutics, drug formulations and delivery methods, small molecule design, antibody-based therapeutics, drug discovery and development, gene- and cell-based therapies, organic and inorganic chemistry, diagnostic products and technologies, medical devices and chemical and biochemical engineering.
His prior IP legal experience includes:
- From 2009 to the present, Ray has been an intellectual property partner at Pierce Atwood LLP and before that at another general practice firm in the Boston area from 2007 to 2009.
- From 1999 to 2007 Ray served in various capacities at Biogen, Inc. and then Biogen Idec Inc., including as Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, Senior Vice President and Acting General Counsel, and Senior VP, Chief IP Counsel and Head of Litigation.
- Prior to that, and throughout the 90’s, Ray was in-house counsel and Chief Patent Counsel at Pharmacia & Upjohn Company, The Upjohn Company, and also at The DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company.
Professional Activities
- Member, American Bar Association Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Committee
- Member, Massachusetts Bar Association
- Member, American Intellectual Property Law Association
- Member, Boston Patent Law Association