Karen Canaan

Karen Canaan is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group in the firm's Silicon Valley office.

Areas of Practice

Ms. Canaan has close to 10 years of experience preparing and prosecuting patent applications for domestic and international clients in the biotechnology, chemical, and medical arts industries.  As part of her practice, Ms. Canaan advises her clients on strategies for developing international patent portfolios, counsels her clients on third party patent positions, and assists her clients in obtaining licensing agreements.  Ms. Canaan also has experience preparing patent legal opinions, including invalidity, non-infringement, and freedom-to-operate opinions.

Representative technology areas that Ms. Canaan has handled for her clients include genomics, proteomics, gene therapies, diagnostic assays, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, medical devices, surgical devices, drug delivery systems, biological fluid handling devices, biomaterials, bioinformatics, biofuels, and new chemical entities.

Shortly after completing law school, Ms. Canaan spent close to two years working at the Office of Petitions at the United States Patent and Trademark Office where she prepared petitions decisions for the Commissioner of Patents on a number of legal issues.  Prior to entering law school, Ms. Canaan spent seven years working in research laboratories at the Texas Medical Center and Stanford University, where she prepared murine embyronic stem cells and transgenic and knockout mice.

Education

• J.D.,Whittier Law School, 1997
• B.A., University of Texas, Austin, 1986

Admissions

• California
• District of Columbia
• United States Patent and Trademark Office

Memberships

• American Intellectual Property Law Association
• San Francisco Bay Area Intellectual Property American Inn of Court

Articles

• Export Controls For Technologies Described in U.S. Invention Disclosures, Patent Strategy & Management, September 1, 2008
• Patent Application Foreign Filing Licenses, Patent Strategy & Management, August 1, 2008
• Sheppard Takes Thelen's Valley Office, The Recorder, April 3, 2008
• Sharing Documents under the Common Interest Doctrine in IP Due Diligence Investigations, Intellectual Property Today, October 1, 2006

• Karen Canaan and John Lenahan, Making the Demand for the Cessation of Trademark Infringement via Metatag Use More Convincing, Intellectual Property and Technology Law Journal, vol. 14, no. 1 (2002).

Speeches

• Overview of Current Claim Construction Practice in View of Phillips, Patent Claim Construction 2007: The Advanced Legal Forum, co-panelist (Palo Alto, CA, January 18-19, 2007).