Michael Farn chairs Fenwick's patent group. His emphasis is on the development of intellectual property assets for high technology corporations—from early stage startups to Fortune 500 companies—with particular focus on building, acquiring and managing patent portfolios and licensing technology in his law practice.

Mike has experience counseling clients in a variety of high technology industries, including optical devices, augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, signal and image processing, telecommunications, EDA and semiconductors. His expertise also includes legal process management and improvement.

Before embarking on his legal career, Mike was a member of the technical staff at M.I.T./Lincoln Laboratory. There, his primary responsibilities were to invent new optical technologies and then transfer these technologies to private corporations for commercialization. He entered the legal field in part because the attorneys supporting Mike’s activities did not adequately understand the commercial world. There was and continues to be a significant need for legal specialists who can understand and solve problems from the client’s point of view, who can explain legal risks in ordinary English, and who can relate these risks to actual commercial risk and reward.