Current Employment Position(s)

Partner

Lawyer Overview

Kurt M. Kjelland is a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the IP Litigation Practice and the Life Sciences Industry Team. Mr. Kjelland's practice focuses on patent litigation and counseling.

He is a registered patent attorney with substantial experience litigating high-stakes patent and trade secret cases in the life sciences and electronics fields. Mr. Kjelland's cases have involved pharmaceutical formulations, injectable wrinkle-fillers, automated prescription delivery instruments, cellular phones, hard disc drives, dental implants, automated DNA sequencing instruments, E. coli diagnostics, transgenic plants, femtosecond lasers used in corneal surgery, peptides, data deconvolution algorithms and optical and laser scanners. He also has handled matters involving consumer products, including hockey equipment, sunglasses, animal transport units, and automobiles.

Mr. Kjelland recently obtained a substantial verdict in an ICC arbitration involving disputed patent royalties. He has also successfully obtained a preliminary injunction preventing a client's customer from disclosing or using his client's trade secrets related to an insulation product, and then successfully defended that judgment on appeal. He recently handled a three patent case in the ITC involving methods of manufacturing hard disc drives.

Mr. Kjelland has considerable experience conducting Hatch-Waxman litigation on behalf of generic drug manufacturers. He was a member of the trial team that invalidated a patent covering the antitumor drug cisplatin.

Mr. Kjelland routinely counsels start-up companies on a variety of IP issues, including strategic patent portfolio development, trade secrets, financing transactions, patentability and infringement analyses, and litigation avoidance strategies.

Prior to his legal career, Mr. Kjelland worked as a chemical engineer for the Dow Chemical Company. Before joining Foley, he was a shareholder at Heller Ehrman LLP.

Mr. Kjelland has written and lectured for the Practicing Law Institute's Patent Litigation program. He co-authored "Not The Same As It Ever Was - Proving Infringement After the Supreme Court's Festo Decision" (PLI 2002). He lectured before the American Chemical Society on written description issues for biotech inventions (ACS 2003). He has written and lectured on methods for protecting and accounting for intellectual property assets, including a San Diego Business Journal article entitled "Intellectual Property Finds Increasing Importance In New Accounting and SEC Regulations" (2002) and a seminar entitled "Owning Markets: Proven Strategies for Intellectual Property Success" (2002).

Mr. Kjelland earned his law degree from Notre Dame Law School (J.D., 1994). He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (B.S., chemical engineering, 1988).

Mr. Kjelland is admitted to practice in California and Arizona and before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; and several U.S. District Courts, including the Southern, Northern, Eastern and Central Districts of California.

He is a member of the California, Arizona and American Bar Associations as well as the American Intellectual Property Law Association; the San Diego Intellectual Property Law Association; and the San Diego Bar Association.

Areas of Practice

• IP Litigation

Bar Admissions

• Arizona, 1995
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• California
• U.S. Court of Appeals Federal Circuit
• U.S. District Court Eastern District of California
• U.S. District Court Central District of California
• U.S. District Court Northern District of California
• U.S. District Court Southern District of California

Professional Associations and Memberships

• American Bar Association
• California Bar Association
• Arizona Bar Association
• American Intellectual Property Law Association
• San Diego Intellectual Property Law Association
• San Diego Bar Association

Classes and Seminars

• "Owning Markets: Proven Strategies for Intellectual Property Sucess"

Past Employment Positions

• Dow Chemical Company, Chemical Engineer
• Heller Ehrman LLP, Shareholder

Education

• Notre Dame Law School, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1994
  J.D.
  Honors: cum laude
• University of California, Los Angeles, 1988
  B.S.
  Major: Chemical Engineering

Published Works

• "Not The Same As It Ever Was...Proving Infringement After the Supreme Court's Festo Decision" (Co-Author), 2002
• "Intellectual Property Finds Increasing Importance In New Accounting and SEC Regulations", San Diego Business Journal, 2002

Address

11250 El Camino Real
Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92130

Phones

(858) 847-6783

Faxes

(858) 792-6773

Emails

Contact Us

Websites

http://www.foley.com