Sarah works with firm clients to create intellectual property to protect biotechnology inventions. She enjoys working with diverse client types, including individual inventors, academic institutions, non-profit foundations, start-up biotechnology companies, established biotechnology companies, and pharmaceutical companies. Each of these has unique business issues and goals that require distinct legal strategies.

Sarah has worked to help develop extensive patent portfolios, both diagnostic and therapeutic, based on scientific work in areas such as cancer genetics and molecular biology techniques. She has worked to create portfolios in the area of cancer immunotherapies and epigenetics. These portfolios have generated licensing income and been the basis for investment in companies moving from one stage of development to the next. The portfolios have also served as vehicles to commercializing academic research, and bringing it to practice in the clinic.

Sarah has conducted a number of reissues, interferences, and re-examinations. She has conducted appeals and coordinated global prosecution strategies. She is particularly interested in the changing standards for subject matter eligibility and working creatively with affected clients to protect their inventions. Sarah has studied freedom to operate and patent landscapes for clients in emerging technologies. She advises clients on protection strategies and licensing.

Sarah’s patent acumen has been recognized in Managing Intellectual Property‘s 2018 edition of IP Stars. The annual publication offers a comprehensive state-by-state analysis of the intellectual property market and its leading practitioners.

Sarah studied Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, writing her thesis on research she conducted on antibiotic resistance in clinical bacterial isolates. Unfortunately, the problem of antibiotic resistance remains a global problem that has not been meaningfully addressed by technical solutions or by laws or regulations. After graduate school, Sarah continued her scientific training, doing post-doctoral research at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England.

Sarah practices in the Washington, DC office of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.