Our Team
Catherine Liang, PhD | Partner
Cathy has 15 years of experience providing patent strategy advice and prosecuting domestic and international pharmaceutical patent applications. Her strengths include assessing patent assets, identifying and mitigating patent portfolio risks, and helping clients identify effective patent strategies to achieve their business goals. She has handled patent matters across a diverse range of chemical technology, including novel small molecule therapeutics relating to oncology, pain, addiction, anti-infective, ocular, neurological and metabolic diseases; pharmaceutical formulations; inorganic catalysts; bio-materials; and diagnostic/radiotherapeutics. Cathy strives to provide client-centered service, responsiveness, and creative problem-solving.
Cathy has worked with pharmaceutical companies at all stages of growth and venture capital firms investing in chemical technology. Besides securing key patents for clients, she has extensive experience in patent due diligence, freedom-to-operate, landscape, and validity assessments. She has represented clients in company-side and investor-side patent due diligence and shepherded companies through rounds of private financing, public offerings, regulatory approval, and product launch in patent related matters.
Before joining Fortem IP, Cathy worked as a patent attorney and patent agent at Cooley LLP and Morrison Foerster LLP in Palo Alto. Prior to her legal career, Cathy got her start in chemistry as a medicinal chemist at Merck Research Laboratories developing novel thiazolidinedione compounds for the treatment of Type II diabetes. She received a Kodak Fellowship for her doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. Cathy was awarded an International Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to carry out research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She holds a JD with honors from the University of San Francisco.
Education
BS Chemistry, Barry University
PhD Organic/Polymer Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
JD, University of San Francisco
Bar Admissions
California
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Publications
Liang, C.O.; Fréchet, J.M.J., Incorporation of Functional Guest Molecules Into an Internally Functionalizable Dendrimer Through Olefin Metathesis, Macromolecules 2005, 38, 15, 6276-6284.
Liang, C.O.; Fréchet, J.M.J., Applying Key Concepts from Nature: Transition State Stabilization, Pre-Concentration and Cooperativity Effects in Dendritic Biomimetics, Prog. Polym. Sci. 2005, 30, 385.
Helms, B.H.; Liang, C.O.; Hawker, C.; Fréchet, J.M.J., Effects of Polymer Architecture and Nanoenvironment in Acylation Reactions Employing Dendritic (Dialkylamino)pyridine Catalysts, Macromolecules 2005, 38, 13, 5411-5415.
Liang, C.O.; Helms, B.; Hawker, C.; Fréchet, J.M.J, Dendronized Cyclocopolymers with a Radial Gradient of Polarity and their Use to Catalyze a Difficult Esterification Reaction, Chem. Comm. 2003, 20, 2524.