Dr. Bethany R. Roahrig

Bethany’s practice centers on patent preparation and prosecution of domestic and international patents. She also has assisted in the preparation of patentability analyses. Bethany has experience working with a broad range of technologies, from biotechnology to the agricultural and horticultural industries – including cannabis, genetically engineered organisms, compositions of matter and biochemistry.

Bethany began her intellectual property career in 2010 as a scientific adviser. In 2011, she became a registered patent agent. Before joining Cooley, Bethany was a patent agent at a US-based international law firm and the operations manager for the Seed Innovation and Protection Alliance (SIPA).

Bethany holds a PhD in biophysics and genetics from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her graduate and postdoctoral research focused on human genetic disorders, which included genetically engineering a novel mouse line using direct gene targeting, as well as designing and performing in vivo and in vitro studies for the successful characterization of mouse models of human birth defects in craniofacial, limb, and neural tube development.

Publications and speaking engagements

• Co-author, “UPOV Releases Explanatory Notes Further Defining Protection for Essentially Derived Varieties,” Cooley alert, February 2024
• Presenter, “Satisfying the Written Description Requirement for Living Inventions,” US Patent and Trademark Office Biotechnology/Chemical/Pharmaceutical Customer Partnership Conference, Alexandria, Virginia, January 2020
• Co-author, “Innovation Seeds Our Future,” Seed World, February 2019
• Author, “Worth a Shot,” Pregnancy & Newborn magazine, October 2014
• Co-author, “Ectodermal Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Shapes the Mouse Face,” Developmental Biology, January 2011 (Also featured in “Beak-Nosed Mice a Clue to Human Cleft Palate,” New Scientist, December 2010)
• Co-author, “Generation and Characterization of a Novel Neural Crest Marker Allele, Inka1-LacZ, Reveals a Role for Inka1 in Mouse Neural Tube Closure,” Developmental Dynamics, April 2010