Indiana’s Barnes and Thornburg, a law firm with more than 600 legal professionals, is adding an Ann Arbor office, the firm’s third in the state.
Located at 2723 S. State St., the office will be staffed by William R. Boudreaux, former in-house counsel at major pharmaceutical companies, and Joshua Ney, a partner and chemist. Barnes and Thornburg opened a Southfield office in July and has had an office in Grand Rapids for more than 15 years.
“In addition to working with larger companies, practicing in the IP space means advising many young and innovative companies, and it’s not long before their success leads to other legal needs,” says Boudreaux. “But regardless of a company’s size, they all want a seamless experience – and we know we’re well positioned to provide that through Barnes and Thornburg’s single-minded dedication to helping businesses achieve their goals with the firm’s broad array of services.”
Boudreaux has more than 20 years of experience in private practice and in-house counsel. He counsels biotech and pharmaceutical clients including Fortune 500 companies and has experience in global patent portfolio creation and management, pharmaceutical patent life-cycle planning, intellectual property due diligence, freedom-to-operate studies, due diligence reviews, infringement/validity studies, and strategy and support for Hatch-Waxman litigation.
Ney has a Ph.D. in chemistry and is focused on patent litigation and prosecution in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical industries. He has experience in therapeutic applications, including antiviral therapies, antibiotics, cardiovascular disease, central nervous system disorders, Huntington’s disease, lower urinary tract disorders, menopausal symptoms, osteoarthritis, and pain management.
The firm is also opening new offices in Raleigh and Salt Lake City, adding a total of nine partners, one associate, two patent agents, an intellectual property technical analyst, and four paralegals from the boutique intellectual property firm Brinks, Gilson, and Lione, which has an Ann Arbor office.
This group brings several decades of combined experience and advanced degrees in fields including organic chemistry, molecular biology, chemistry, and biotechnology. The firm’s life science practice includes 35 life sciences attorneys, patent agents, and legal professionals. The additions continue the firm’s focus on growing its patent practice and overall intellectual property offerings.
“Bringing in a team of this caliber with their technical backgrounds, strong reputations, combination of client-side and firm experience, and presence across four different markets continues Barnes and Thornburg’s growth story of the past decade,” says Robert T. Grand, managing partner of the firm. “This latest step expands our geographic footprint, most notably in the booming Raleigh-Durham area, while adding to our already robust life sciences and IP capabilities.”
