Benjamin T. Hemmelgarn

Ben has experience drafting and prosecuting patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for inventions relating to protein fusions, antisense oligonucleotides, and pharmaceutical formulations. He also provides opinions on validity and freedom-to-operate for clients in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. In addition to his prosecution and counseling experience, Ben is involved in numerous phases of litigation, including pre-litigation analysis, coordinating discovery, drafting pleadings, and managing day-to-day litigation activities.

While in law school, Ben worked as a law student associate at the Ohio State University Technology and Commercialization office, where he met inventors, performed due diligence checks, and drafted responses to office actions from the USPTO. Ben spent a semester as a legal extern to the Honorable Judge Jeffrey Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He received a fellowship to spend a semester studying International and European Business Law in Madrid, Spain.

Prior to his legal career, Ben worked as a research assistant in several research labs at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center. As an undergraduate student, he researched the effect of transcriptional pathways on aberrant cell cycle progression, and successfully defended an undergraduate thesis relating to this research. Ben also spent time as an international research fellow, working in a leukemia research lab at the University of São Paulo's Ribeirão Preto campus in Brazil.

Ben volunteers his time with the firm's immigration law pro bono group. He has been recognized on the Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll.