Courtenay C. Brinckerhoff

Courtenay C. Brinckerhoff

Courtenay Brinckerhoff is a partner in Foley's Washington, D.C. office. She is former chair of the firm's Chemical & Pharmaceutical Practice and a member of the firm's Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical and Appellate Practices as well as the Life Sciences Industry Team. She also is involved with Foley's Medical Device Initiative and Nutraceuticals Team. Her practice focuses on client counseling in all aspects of obtaining, licensing and enforcing patents and conducting freedom-to-operate and due diligence investigations. She has represented clients before the U.S. Patent Office, the U.S. Patent Office Board of Appeals and Interferences, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Ms. Brinckerhoff works with clients in diverse industries, including pharmaceuticals (chemical and biotechnological), human and animal food products, nutraceuticals, and medical devices.

Ms. Brinckerhoff joined Foley as an associate in the fall of 2001, after clerking for the Honorable Judge Schall on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Prior to her clerkship, she worked at Foley as a patent agent and law clerk. Ms. Brinckerhoff also has worked as a teaching assistant for nursing chemistry at Georgetown University and as an organic chemistry research assistant at the American University in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Brinckerhoff graduated from George Mason University School of Law (J.D., summa cum laude, 1999) as valedictorian of her class. While a law student, she served as a member of the George Mason University Law Review and published an article in the University of Baltimore Intellectual Property Law Journal related to legislation that limits liability for infringement of medical method patents.

Ms. Brinckerhoff graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in chemistry, with distinction, in 1988 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1988, Ms. Brinckerhoff received an award for outstanding achievement in chemistry from the Virginia Section of the American Chemical Society.

The interface between patent law and FDA law is an area of interest to Ms. Brinckerhoff. In 1998, she received the Robert C. Watson Award from the American Intellectual Property Law Association for a paper she wrote as a student, "Can the Safe Harbor of 35 U.S.C. 271(e)(1) Shelter Pioneer Drug Manufacturers?" The paper also received an award from the Food & Drug Law Institute and was published in its Food & Drug Law Journal. In 2004, she published a paper discussing a Federal Circuit decision in that area in the American Biotechnology Laboratory, "Will the Integra Leave Pioneer Drug Manufacturers Out in The Cold?" Ms. Brinckerhoff has continued to follow this issue after the Supreme Court reversed that Federal Circuit decision, and believes that the evolving doctrine surrounding this safe harbor will have significant effects on clients developing new or follow-on drug products, and may impact the value of drug research-related patents, such as research tool patents.

Ms. Brinckerhoff also is a regular contributor to the "Genes & Patents" column of Genetic Engineering News, and writes and speaks on topics important to clients in the chemical, biotechnological, pharmaceutical, food, nutraceutical and medical device industries.