Ryan Flandro is a registered patent attorney with experience in all facets of intellectual property law.  Ryan helps established domestic and multi-national companies, as well as start-ups and independent inventors, develop comprehensive and sophisticated patent strategies consistent with their business, technical and cost objectives. 

Ryan’s practice focuses on all aspects of patent procurement proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  This includes preparing and prosecuting utility and design patent applications, conducting examiner interviews to advance prosecution and negotiate allowable subject matter, and filing and arguing appeals before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences.  He also has experience in reissue and ex parte reexamination proceedings before the USPTO, including conducting such proceedings concurrent with related litigation.

More broadly, Ryan counsels clients on a wide range of patent-related issues, including:

• developing and managing domestic and global patent portfolios;
• conducting patent due diligence investigations; and
• preparing, reviewing, and counseling clients regarding patentability, validity, infringement and freedom-to-operate opinions.

In particular, he conducts patent clearance studies and advises on product design-arounds to avoid infringement, renders formal and informal noninfringement and/or invalidity opinions concerning competitors’ patents, conducts pre-litigation infringement analysis and strategy, and performs IP audits.

Ryan’s technical knowledge encompasses a variety of technology areas in the mechanical, electro-mechanical, medical device, business-method and e-commerce fields.  Ryan has extensive experience counseling clients as well as preparing and prosecuting applications in the following technologies: 

• unmanned air vehicle (UAV) systems;
• people movers;
• seals;
• large-scale processing machines; and
• systems in various fields including tobacco, paper, textiles, plastic containers, ski and snowboard technologies, and automated tax preparation software, as well as a wide range of consumer products. 

Ryan also has prosecution and litigation experience in various medical-related technologies such as catheters, drug-eluting stents, barbed sutures, medically-acceptable polymers, and airway management technologies including laryngeal masks and endotracheal tubes, to name but a few.

Prior to joining Venable, Ryan was a patent examiner at the USPTO where he examined U.S. and international patent applications in various mechanical, electro-mechanical and business-method related technologies.  He also served as an extern at the USPTO’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences where he assisted an Administrative Patent Judge in reviewing and preparing opinions in ex parte appeals taken from adverse decisions of examiners. 

Before entering the legal field, Ryan held engineering and manufacturing design positions at several small to mid-size technology companies in the Pacific Northwest, who themselves often sought counsel on intellectual property-related issues surrounding new products and processes.