Mary E Atkinson

Mary Atkinson focuses her practice on assisting and counseling clients in obtaining, protecting, and leveraging intellectual property in the chemical and biotechnology arts. Her technical experiences includes 10 years as a research scientist at the University of Washington in the areas of genetics and molecular biology.  In addition to patent preparation and prosecution, Mary assists clients in intellectual property due diligence, technology licensing agreements, and infringement, validity, and freedom-to-practice opinions.

Mary also provides legal advice and support to life sciences clients in the areas of pre-clinical and clinical drug development.  She has extensive experience in drafting and negotiating a variety of agreements associated with the conduct of clinical trials world-wide, such as research collaboration agreements with universities, manufacturing and supply agreements, material transfer agreements, clinical trial agreements with contract research organizations and institutions, indemnification agreements, and informed patient consent. 

Mary has both law-firm and in-house experience, having served as in-house counsel for Sonus Pharmaceuticals, a small biotech company, for five years.  During her time at Sonus, Mary gained invaluable insights into the challenges and business issues faced by emerging life sciences companies.

Prior to law school Mary was a research scientist, University of Washington, Department of Pathology from 1989 to 1999.