Fenwick Expands Complex IP Capabilities with New Partners Carl Morales and Rufus Pichler
Fenwick today announced the arrivals of Dr. Carl Morales and Rufus Pichler, who join Fenwick as partners in the firm’s Intellectual Property (IP) Practice. Their arrivals further strengthen the firm’s complex transactional and commercial IP capabilities with a focus on key industries.
“Fenwick’s interdisciplinary intellectual property team powers our firm’s ability to advise companies innovating leading-edge technologies and scientific breakthroughs,” said Fenwick chair Richard Dickson. “We are delighted to welcome Carl and Rufus—two leading IP practitioners, who each bring deep industry knowledge and technical experience that will serve our dynamic tech and life sciences clients.”
“We feel exceedingly proud to have Carl and Rufus join our thriving IP group,” Fenwick IP Practice chair Rajiv Patel said. “Carl’s deep specialization in small molecule drug patents fills a long-standing need for our patent group. Rufus’s remarkable versatility with technologies and complex transactions is a tremendous addition to our technology transactions team and great value to our clients.”
Morales and Pichler join Fenwick as the firm continues to invest in expanding in key strategic areas to serve its growing client base. Altogether, Fenwick has welcomed 10 new partners this year, including Key Shin, who like Pichler also joined the IP group’s technology transactions team in San Francisco.
Morales, who joins the firm’s New York office, counsels privately held and public pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies on patent strategies to maximize drug product exclusivity. He helps to execute on patent prosecution strategies and advises on risks to exclusivity that affect valuation of future patent royalty streams and revenues for marketed pharmaceutical products. He has a PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University.
Pichler, who joins the firm’s San Francisco office, advises technology and life sciences companies on a wide range of strategic and transactional matters. He brings over 20 years of experience counseling clients on a wide range of collaborations, licensing and commercial transactions. He has also advised clients extensively on complex patent licensing deals, as well as intellectual property aspects of domestic and cross-border M&A transactions. He holds advanced degrees in law in both the United States and Germany.
“I’m excited to join Fenwick’s superb intellectual property and life sciences practices, and work with the firm’s impressive clients,” said Morales. “The Fenwick platform will allow me to expand and deepen my life sciences patent practice and also collaborate with the many other experienced life science professionals at the firm.”
“Fenwick’s market position and reputation present enormous opportunities to further cultivate my transactional practice and draw on the firm’s exceptional resources to meet clients’ demand for highly specialized expertise to support their most important and complex deals,” Pichler said. “My industry experience aligns very well with the firm's singular focus on technology and life sciences, and I’m excited to join the firm at this moment of ever-increasing activity in the technology licensing sector.”
Morales has deep experience in small molecule drug exclusivity and in prosecuting small molecule drug patent portfolios, as well as other chemistry and materials science matters. Having practiced before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for more than 15 years, he is also a skillful prosecution counsel. He was recently honored as Patent Strategy Attorney of the Year (New York) in the 2021 LMG Life Sciences Americas Awards.
Pichler has focused on the high-tech and life sciences industries for more than two decades. He has deep transactional experience in the semiconductor, mobile communications and high-tech products industries, as well as the biotechnology and agri-tech sectors. He is consistently recognized as one of the world’s leading patent professional in IAM 1000 and as a Transactions Star by Managing IP, and ranked by Legal 500 (Patent Licensing) and Chambers (Technology Transactions).
About Fenwick’s Intellectual Property Practice
Fenwick's commercially savvy intellectual property lawyers partner with companies at all stages of their lifecycle to create, exploit, manage and protect their most valuable intellectual property assets in the context of their key business objectives. We represent many of the world’s most innovative technology and life sciences companies—from developers of futuristic life-prolonging technologies to those that are investing in the next wave of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, automation and robotics products and tools.
About Fenwick
Fenwick provides comprehensive legal services to leading technology and life sciences companies — at every stage of their lifecycle — and the investors that partner with them. We craft innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions in areas ranging from venture capital, public offerings, joint ventures, M&A and strategic relationships, to intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, taxation, antitrust and employment and labor law. For more than four decades, Fenwick has helped some of the world's most recognized companies become and remain market leaders. For more information, please explore fenwick.com.