Robert Buchanan, Ph.D., J.D.

Senior US Patent Attorney

robert@torreypineslaw.com
main: +1 (858) 869-1250

Robert L. Buchanan is an accomplished attorney whose practice regularly draws from 20+ years of professional work in the fields of law, science, investment, and business. Robert has counseled clients ranging from start-ups and educational institutions to Fortune 500 companies. His client work involved many facets of US patent law, including strategic patent drafting and prosecution, validity, inventorship, licensing, litigation, and infringement analysis. Those projects required a working knowledge of a wide range of technologies including cell and gene therapies, gene editing, antibody therapeutics, immunotherapies, diagnostics, as well as small and macro-molecule therapeutics.

Robert has created and/or taken senior management roles in companies based in the United States and Europe. These positions included Avexxin (General Counsel; now Coegin Pharma (listed in Norway as COEGIN: Nordic GM)); Regenesance (co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, acquired as Complement Pharma by Graviton Bioscience) and Biogen (Associate General Counsel, BIIB: NASDAQ).

He is a past Biology Fellow of the California Institute of Technology where his neurogenetics research under Seymour Benzer was supported by grants from the McKnight Endowment Fund and French Foundation for Alzheimer Research. Dr. Benzer was a celebrated American biologist who coined the genetic phrase “cistron” and was one of the first to propose a link between an animal’s genes and its behavior. Robert is an entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Miami (Miami, Florida) and he also sits on the board of its Wallace H. Coulter Center for commercializing medical and bioengineering research. He is also co-founder and board member of two private companies: Ambulero (spin-out of the University of Miami) focused on developing new cell and gene therapies for vascular disease, and RORA Biologics (spin-out of Case Western Reserve and Emory) developing novel T-cell therapies for infectious disease and oncology applications.

Other past roles include co-founder and early advisor to Idogen (listed in Sweden as IDOGEN:ST), and partner and co-chair of the Life Sciences Practice Group of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, (merged with Locke Lord): a large national law firm. Robert attended law school at night while working days at the law firm.

Areas of focus

• Start-up business counseling, corporate governance and management issues,
• Angel and venture capital fundraising
• Intellectual Property, strategic counseling, patent drafting, prosecution
• Technology licensing (in and out transactions)
• Investment funding and due diligence
• Freedom-To-Operate (FTO), patentability, patent validity, and patent infringement analysis

Education

Robert received a Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from Suffolk University of Law School, Boston. He received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.S., cum laude, in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Bar Admissions

Robert is admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and is registered to practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office