Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 919-381-1554

Karen Hahn

Karen Hahn has practiced in-house at life science and Fortune 100 companies focusing on intellectual property and transactional matters for over 20 years. Ms. Hahn has represented client’s interests in a wide variety of technologies. These include textiles and carpet, synthetic fiber, polymers, dispersions, chemicals, agricultural products, plant biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, nutritional products, medical devices, biologics and more.

Her extensive in-house experience provides her with a deep understanding of each client’s needs and perspectives. Ms. Hahn has experience across multiple legal disciplines: intellectual property, licensing, compliance, commercial, business formation, M&A and related disciplines. She has built life science-related compliance infrastructure from the ground up. During her extensive career, she has managed litigation, including Hatch-Waxman litigation, resolved disputes with favorable terms for her clients and negotiated numerous multimillion dollar licenses and commercial agreements. She has participated in due diligence on both the seller side and the buyer side.

Her intellectual property experience includes managing a group of intellectual attorneys and agents supporting a start-up biotechnology company, IP strategy, patent application drafting and prosecution, litigation strategy and oversight, counseling, portfolio management, due diligence, patentability, and invalidity and non-infringement opinions. Ms. Hahn created winning positions in European patent oppositions (both as opponent and defending patentee) and appeals to the US Board of Patent Appeals as well as the Federal Circuit. Ms. Hahn has been an invited speaker at conferences on biotechnology and managing patent litigation.

Ms. Hahn is admitted to practice in North Carolina, Indiana (inactive), the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit, the Federal District Court, Southern District of Indiana and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She is a North Carolina Superior Court certified mediator (inactive) and a certified Guardian ad Litem for Durham County. She is, or has been, a participating member of the Licensing Executives Society, the National Association of Patent Practitioners and the North Carolina Bar Association, Business Law Section and Intellectual Property Section, where she was a member of the Section Council. Throughout her career, she has been active in pro bono programs at legal aid institutions and programs assisting low wealth entrepreneurs.

Prior to achieving her law license, Ms. Hahn worked at the bench in the research laboratories of a leading pharmaceutical company, where she co-authored several papers on solid state stability of lyophilized pharmaceuticals under the name Dellerman. Ms. Hahn has a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati and a J.D., with honors, from Indiana University, Indianapolis.
 
Outside of her law practice, Ms. Hahn is active in the community, recently participating on the Board of Directors and serving as President for a local chapter of a national civic organization. She enjoys volunteering her time for environmental, animal-related and ecological causes. As an equestrian, Ms. Hahn has a goal to obtain her bronze medal in dressage.  Her other interests include landscape gardening and anything to do with dogs.