Blair Hughes is a partner with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP. Blair has considerable experience managing patent, trademark and trade secret matters for his clients. In particular, Blair works closely with his clients to develop and implement patenting strategies - from performing patent landscape analyses and product clearance studies to ultimately assisting clients with identifying and obtaining patents and trademarks encompassing their critical technologies in the U.S. and abroad. Blair works closely with his clients - large and small companies in such wide-ranging technologies as circuit board and IC manufacturing, environmental sciences, green technologies, refining, polymers, medical devices, medical diagnostic tools, chemicals and pharmaceuticals - to help them develop and implement patent and trademark acquisition, licensing and enforcement strategies to achieve their business goals. Blair also regularly counsels clients regarding patent validity, infringement, and licensing issues and he represents clients in patent and trademark infringement litigation.
Blair lives in Chicago proper as he has for the past 25 years. While he is a Cubs fan he is an even bigger SF Giants fan. On weekends, he can be found at a local museum, the beach or at a park with his two young children and with Hope his wife.
Representative Experience
- Assisted several start-up biological diagnostics companies develop patenting strategies that were instrumental in the later sale of the companies.
- Managed the technical assessment of dozens of third party patent applications in the midst of due diligence of the potential purchase of a large polymer manufacturing company and provided a frank assessment of the impact of the patent applications on the value of the target company.
- Successfully prosecuted to patent allowance the large majority of hundreds of U.S. patent applications filed by a UK based technology development and licensing company.
- Advises and registers Trademarks for a variety of clients in the U.S. and abroad.
- Successfully represented clients in asserting and defending against patent infringement actions in the ITC and in Federal District Courts.
- Successfully obtained worldwide patent protection for two different pharmaceutical compounds that garnered FDA approval on behalf of a biopharmaceutical client.
- Responsible for obtaining many business-critical patents for an IC manufacturing materials supplier and had the validity of several issued U.S. patents upheld in a recent jury verdict.