Joanna Liebes Hubberts

Joanna’s practice focuses on advising emerging and established companies and their investors on patent matters – including strategic patent prosecution and portfolio strategy, intellectual property due diligence, and IP-related disputes. Joanna has spent more than a decade working with life sciences companies, particularly in the medtech sector, and she prides herself on providing pragmatic and creative solutions for her clients that advance their IP objectives and align their IP strategy with their business strategy. Joanna collaborates closely with her clients to craft and execute comprehensive patent portfolio strategies that safeguard her clients’ innovations across the globe. In addition to her extensive knowledge of patent preparation and prosecution, Joanna has performed countless investor-side and company-side IP due diligences, as well as freedom-to-operate, patentability, invalidity, infringement and ownership analyses.

Joanna has experience advising on IP matters in a diverse range of life sciences fields, with a particular focus on medical technologies, including, for example, analyte monitoring, cardiovascular devices (including heart valve repair, ablation and closure devices), digital health (including GUIs and applications using machine learning models), blood pumps, ocular implants and treatment devices, energy-based tissue treatments, neural stimulation, diagnostics, wearable sensors, drug delivery, suturing devices, prosthetics, orthodontics, orthopedic implants, women’s health products, and medical imaging.

Joanna also has experience in post-grant review proceedings before the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office (EPO), US district court patent litigation, and arbitrations. She works closely with patent litigators to evaluate and develop patent strategies for litigation matters, and she has the background knowledge necessary to work closely with technical experts. Joanna’s litigation and pre-litigation skill set spans many technological areas, including medical devices such as gastrointestinal implants and medical imaging technologies, and other fields, such as water treatment, immersion lithography, and extraction processes.

Joanna serves on the board of Athena, an organization supporting the advancement of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). She’s also a member of Cooley’s firmwide strategic Women’s Initiative committee.

Prior to joining Cooley, Joanna was an associate at Morrison Foerster. Before attending law school, Joanna worked as a mechanical engineer at a multinational oil and gas company.