Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology covers a rapidly growing set of enabling technologies that take advantage of novel properties that can emerge when matter is manipulated on scales measured in nanometers (one billionth of a meter). At McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP (MLA), our combined experience in regulatory policy within environmental and public health, our international perspective, and our substantive knowledge of emerging technologies particularly suit us to the newly developing regulatory landscape. Our practical application as well as our expansive understanding of the ranging industries and products not only applies across many of the firm’s traditional practice areas, but also directly applies to the nanotechnology space, which has broad application across products and industrial processes ranging from industrial “chemical” uses to cosmetics, food additives, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices.
Over the last decade, governments and industry have been heavily investing in materials and applications development for nanotechnology. This investment has begun to create a “perfect storm” of nanomaterial uses in products hitting multiple investment and regulatory policy points even as changes in basic legislation and regulation are being considered and enacted.
Risk assessment and regulatory policy are being assessed and revised through legislation and guidance as more nanomaterials derived from the new technologies reach regulatory and safety assessment decision points. These assessments and revisions are happening at federal, statutory, and international levels creating a challenging landscape of policy evolution and compliance.
Regulatory and Public Policy
Our ability to customize public sector strategies to resolve our clients’ issues with government, and to identify opportunities that will positively impact their bottom line, attests to our relationships with policy makers. Our clients range from multinational corporations to non-profit organizations. We represent international governments with issues pending before the U.S. Congress and federal agencies, as well as local governments across the country seeking assistance at the state or federal levels of government. We work with clients to design legislative strategies that will have the greatest impact on policy makers.
We skillfully navigate the traditional regulatory processes for product authorizations in situations of evolving science and regulatory policy. Our attorneys and senior policy advisors for emerging technology translate current understanding of regulatory policy and science for client needs, and provide the following:
- Compliance support and strategies for chemicals, pesticides, food additives, and medical products as legislation and regulations are adapted to cover nanomaterials;
- Advice on brand protection as well as tort action avoidance and defense in the face of developing understanding of toxicity data and toxicity testing;
- Advice on technology acquisition with respect to regulatory policy development; and
- Advocacy within regulatory policy development at agencies on behalf of clients facing potential regulatory action or seeking regulatory approval.
Regulatory actions across governments are also inter-dependent as understanding improves in one region, regulatory approach, or constituency and finds its way to others. MLA understands these competing inter-dependencies and counsels clients in effective resolution of their dampening effects on businesses. Confusingly different and costly compliance pathways in the global market are mitigated, and barriers to trade addressed through foresight and action. MLA provides transnational, specific, and leading-edge experience to clients navigating the changing international regulatory and public perception for products.
Intellectual Property (IP)
MLA’s IP attorneys guide clients from the conception of their technologies through the commercialization phase, enabling our clients to enhance their market positions worldwide. We provide commercialization support by first helping companies identify technologies that warrant patenting, and then working closely with those companies to prosecute their applications to issuance. The firm’s deep experience with chemicals, materials science and technologies related to nanomaterials enables us to facilitate meetings between our clients and companies that have mutual technological and commercial interests.
Our IP group also specializes in monetizing investment into patents on behalf of companies that manufacture products, as well as technology development companies through licensing and litigation, if needed. Through such enforcement actions, we have helped clients to either exclude infringers from their market, or to receive compensation for the infringement.
Economic Stimulus
Earlier this year President Obama signed into law the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Stimulus). In response to the Stimulus, MLA has created a group, The American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Taskforce, that is already actively counseling and positioning clients by identifying direct funding opportunities, as well as collaborating with clients and government to build public-private partnerships, and creating coalitions of industry partners. In tandem with assisting clients identify and take advantage of new funding and tax provisions, we ensure that our clients have the political law, government contracts, and compliance counseling they will need once the funds are disbursed.
Litigation
Our litigators have handled cases in federal and state courts, as well as in a number of industries. Our clients include both manufacturers and distributors of diverse products, from industrial “chemical” uses to cosmetics, food additives, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. At MLA, our attorneys combine their experience in complex civil litigation with the firm's experience in the technical and medical issues that often form the battleground for these cases. MLA's extensive experience with, and background in, scientific and medical issues enable us to integrate complex issues to present a credible scientific defense for a firm.
One unique aspect of MLA's litigation practice is the defense of government contractors in product liability and environmental tort cases. We are particularly skilled at presenting the special legal defenses and third-party claims that are available when a products or environmental matter arises in connection with a contractual relationship with the government, or out of the battlefield.