Sponsors

Fish & Richardson P.C. is an international law firm with more than 450 lawyers in 11 offices throughout the United States as well as in Munich, Germany. The firm is one of the largest in the United States practicing intellectual property, litigation, and corporate law and offers global services that include worldwide IP strategy and representation in multi-national litigation. Founded in 1878, the firm represented Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers. For more than 125 years we have served great innovators, helping to protect countless ideas, nurture discoveries, and bring new concepts to market. The firm prosecuted and litigated many of the fundamental patents of an industrialized America, serving corporations creating the cutting-edge technologies of the day: the telephone, the air-brake, the steam turbine, the automobile, and the radio. Frederick Fish, the firm's founder, was for many years the acknowledged leader of the patent bar of the entire country at a time when patents were more important than they had ever been. Today, the firm continues to represent great innovators working in cutting-edge technologies. In fact, Fish represents 11 of the top 25 World's Most Innovative Companies, as identified in a Spring 2007 Business Week survey.

Nixon Peabody is one of the largest law firms in the United States with more than 800 attorneys collaborating across 21 major practice areas in 17 office locations, including Washington, D.C. , New York, Boston, Chicago, London, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Silicon Valley. Nixon Peabody has deep experience representing research institutions and universities, and the life sciences and technology-based startup companies that emerge from these institutions. Extensive experience on both the investor and company sides of financing deals enables us to make introductions that are beneficial to both companies in search of funding and venture capital firms looking for exceptional companies in which to invest. Our attorneys negotiate, structure, and close venture capital funding deals and all types of strategic alliances and joint ventures. We help our clients know what to expect throughout the financing process and how to avoid common pitfalls. Our relationships with a broad network of investors nationwide enable us to negotiate the most favorable terms and conditions for all types of private equity issuance. We offer full-service corporate capabilities emerging businesses need as they mature. Nixon Peabody has a robust Intellectual Property Practice that counsels technology and life sciences companies on due diligence matters, patent prosecution, patent interference, patent application, patent reexamination, patent reissue, transactional matters, and litigation.