Melissa A. Beede

Overview

Melissa Beede has over 20 years of experience protecting innovations in function and design in the areas of software, electronics, medical devices, and consumer products. She collaborates with her clients to understand their unique challenges and opportunities and strengthen their competitive positions. As counsel for start-ups, venture capital firms, Fortune 500 companies, universities, and hospitals, Melissa has helped her clients achieve business goals ranging from attracting financing to commercializing products to selling IP assets.

Melissa’s broad practice includes portfolio development, patent prosecution in the US and abroad, due diligence studies, product clearance assessments, licensing negotiations, litigation, and post-grant matters, such as reissue, reexamination and inter partes review. She has extensive experience in design patents, which she often avails as a low-cost, high-value component of an overall IP strategy.

Her areas of technical experience include heart catheters, dialysis systems, sterilization devices, RFID sensors, electrocardiogram equipment, telecommunications, networks, data storage systems, locating devices, imaging systems, speech recognition platforms, consumer electronics, navigation systems, school and office supplies, and software applications.

Melissa is recognized for providing responsive, client-oriented service. She seeks to continuously cultivate trust by delivering solutions that meet budgets, deadlines, and commercial objectives.

In addition to her work at Wolf Greenfield, Melissa is a part-time lecturer at Tufts University, where she teaches a self-designed undergraduate course entitled “Intellectual Property for Innovators.”

Experience

• Developed and managed patent portfolio of company that provides RFID-enabled monitoring and data analysis systems, resulting in acquisition of the company and its IP assets by a field leader.
• Working closely with product development company, built portfolio of medical and consumer product patents and assisted with licensing the IP to Fortune 500 company.
• Evaluated numerous patents asserted against client by major patent holder, and contributed to license negotiations for the asserted patents that lead to a substantial reduction in the royalties requested.
• On behalf of venture capital firm, evaluated the IP of early stage semiconductor start-up, performed product clearance assessments, and developed a comprehensive IP strategy.
• Over the course of several years, advised major consumer products company on issues of infringement, including strategies for avoiding infringement, in connection with over 50 products.

Activities

• Worldwide Technovation competition, Mentor and Judge
• Wellesley Education Foundation, Board Member

Recognition

Melissa was recognized as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers for her work in intellectual property law for 10 consecutive years (2009-2018). She has also repeatedly been named by Super Lawyers  as one of the “Top Women Lawyers in Massachusetts.”

At Suffolk Law, Melissa was awarded an Academic Leadership Scholarship for being among the top five students in her section, “Best Brief” in Legal Practice Skills, and an American Jurisprudence Award in Administrative Law.

At Tufts, Melissa was elected to several honor societies including Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and Golden Key, and won several academic awards including the Morris and Sid Heyman Prize for “academic achievement and future promise” among Electrical Engineering students, and the Class of 1898 Prize for “high scholarly ability together with a wide range of intellectual interests and competence." She served two terms as Co-President of the Society of Women Engineers.

Interests

Melissa enjoys sharing her love of technology and innovation with the next generation. She teaches an undergraduate course at Tufts titled “Intellectual Property for Innovators.” She has served as a mentor and judge for the worldwide Technovation competition, member of advisory committees on STEAM education and 21st century learning, and Board member of the Wellesley Education Foundation.

Melissa also enjoys learning about other cultures and locales and can often be found planning her next trip with her husband or family. Recent favorites have included hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, watching wildebeest cross the Mara River during the Great Migration, tracking a family of mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and dining with Berber families in the High Atlas Mountains.