Dr. Gilberto M. (Ybet) Villacorta is a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP. He is a member of the Chemical, Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical, Electronics, IP Litigation, Mechanical & Electromechanical Technologies, and China Practices and the Life Sciences Industry Team. He is chair of the Intellectual Property Department of the firm's Washington, D.C. office.
Dr. Villacorta's practice focuses on assisting technologically diverse clients worldwide with their intellectual property and business transactions needs. These needs may include planning, development and maintenance of patent and trademark portfolios; licensing, marketing, product development negotiations and the preparation of the resulting agreements; due diligence investigations in connection with mergers, acquisitions, formation of joint ventures and financing; patentability, registrability, peer review, market assessment, validity and infringement opinions; and enforcement and litigation.
Some of Dr. Villacorta's patent cases include Amgen v. Elanex (patent infringement case concerning a gene for erythropoietin), Taguchi v. Jorgensen (interference matter to determine how much of gene one has to sequence to own it), Eli Lilly v. Teva (ANDA case involving the PMS drug, Sarafem), ADS v. USCubed (misappropriation of trade secrets and copyright infringement of information management system), Parkson v. Severn Trent (declaratory judgment action against patent for denitrification control system), and FireStar v. Red Hat (patent infringement action against marketing, distribution and support for open source software product).
Dr. Villacorta received his law degree (J.D., 1991) from Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan. He was awarded the Ph.D. in 1987 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also received his master's (M.S., 1982) and bachelor's (B.A., 1978) degrees from Rutgers University. From 1980-1983, Dr. Villacorta was a member of the technical staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J.
Dr. Villacorta has been Peer Review Rated in Martindale-Hubbell's peer review rating system and was recognized in 2009, 2007 and 2004 as a Top Lawyer in Intellectual Property by the Washingtonian Magazine. He was a previous runner-up in the Washington Business Journal's Top Washington Lawyers in Intellectual Property and was identified as "One of 15 leading IP Lawyers in Washington D.C." by the Legal Times in 2003.
Dr. Villacorta is admitted to practice in New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia; and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey; the Supreme Courts of the States of New York and New Jersey; the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; and the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.
Over the years, Dr. Villacorta has authored or co-authored dozens of scientific and legal publications, been granted his own patents and copyrights, and presented numerous lectures on various intellectual property topics. Most recently, Dr. Villacorta participated in a plenary session during the AIPLA Mid-Winter Institute in Las Vegas in January 2012, presenting a talk on "Hot Topics in Patent Law." A copy of his manuscript is available upon request.