Samuel J. Petuchowski, Ph.D.

Samuel J. Petuchowski is a partner at Sunstein. Sam specializes in structuring and developing our clients’ patent portfolios.

Experience

• Prior to taking up the practice of law, Sam worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the development and application of astronomical instrumentation, with particular emphasis on infrared probes of the galaxy. As a postdoctoral scientist, Sam held positions at the University of Maryland and at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where he developed photoacoustic and fiber optic sensors. Sam has authored numerous scholarly articles.
• Sam works with clients including corporations, institutions, and entrepreneurs to build up and maintain portfolios: from a first patent, around which a start-up might be built, to portfolios of a hundred patents, or more, covering many aspects of a developing technology. Sometimes the patents of an enterprise constitute its crown jewels. Which aspects of a technology are to be patented and which are to be kept as trade secrets requires careful consideration. At other times, an effective patent strategy entails keeping a close eye on the patent activities of a client’s competitors and intervening, when necessary, to ensure that competitors may assert no more coverage than they are entitled to.
• Working with a network of foreign associates, Sam assists a client in structuring a global posture that meets the marketing strategy of a client and known threats to a client’s interests in the marketplace, seeking to optimize for future business opportunities or combinations and, if necessary, enforcement of a client’s property rights.
• Sam has successfully defended a client’s patents against validity challenges by a competitor, resulting in a strengthened patent posture for the client.
• Keeping current with changes in the jurisprudential environment allows Sam to assist clients in establishing rights in new areas of intellectual property protection, in the U.S. and abroad.
• Sam has prosecuted patents in a wide array of fields including animation; antennas and radiating arrays, from radio (for ground-penetrating radar) to x-rays; blood oximetry, hemoanalysis, measurement and analysis of vital body function; business methods from asset allocation to stock underwriting; dental modeling, techniques and instrumentation; detectors, femtosecond to microsecond, microwaves to gamma rays, and neutrons; instrumentation, measurement and analysis; mechanical and mobility devices; optics (near-field imaging, optical coherence tomography; microscopy; optical tissue sectioning, and cytometry; aberration optometry); optronic devices and techniques (modulation, switching); sources of radiation, infrared through x-ray; spectroscopic apparatus and techniques from molecular to elemental; surgical devices and instruments; telecommunications; therapeutic beam monitoring; and x-ray technology and systems.

Honors

• In 2004, Sam was named by the publishers of Law & Politics and Boston magazine a “Rising Star” in the field of intellectual property in Massachusetts. This designation is limited to the top 2.5 percent of attorneys who are under the age of 40 or who have been practicing 10 or fewer years, as chosen by their peers and through independent research.

Bar and Court Admissions

• Sam is a member of the bars of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of Maryland, and has been admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.