Carissa T. Howard

An intellectual property attorney with over 16 years of experience, Carissa's practice is focused in federal court intellectual property litigation, patent prosecution, trademark prosecution, intellectual property counseling, and contract drafting. She also has experience in intellectual property licensing and preparing due diligence, infringement and validity opinions.

Carissa spent several years with the Sidley Austin LLP law firm in their Los Angeles intellectual property group, wherein she represented Fortune 500 and international companies in complex, multi-party patent infringement litigation. Her experience includes all phases of litigation, including pleadings, discovery and deposition practice, motion practice, dispositive and discovery related motions, claim construction phase, expert phase, trial and pre-trial.

After Sidley, Carissa maintained her own patent and trademark prosecution clients, growing her practice to include working for tech start-ups as their outside general counsel.

Being licensed to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office since 2002, Carissa has written many patent applications for a diverse set of clients and technology, which includes consumer products, household products, chemicals, semiconductors, abrasives, refractory materials and applications, financial services and payments technology, networking and encryption technologies, e-commerce applications, financial transactions processing, information technology, inventory management systems, as well as medical devices, home medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and applications, including pulmonary therapies and antibody preparations.