Brian McKnight is a registered patent attorney with over fifteen years of experience in patent drafting, patent prosecution, patent due diligence, freedom-to-operate and non-infringement opinions, invalidity analysis, reexaminations, and litigation across many technology areas.
Brian provides practical, business-oriented advice and delivers quality results on important projects. Several clients have noted that they choose Brian and the Polsinelli team when upper-level management has an interest in a project because they know that he and the team will deliver quality results, on time, and will meet all specified project parameters. Other clients appreciate Brian’s approach to patent drafting, which is appropriately considerate of the inventor’s time, he takes care to ask questions at the appropriate time rather than sending incomplete drafts full of questions.
The majority of Brian’s practice pertains to patent drafting and patent prosecution projects for clients from all stages of growth- from startups to multinational corporations. He takes a practical approach to prosecution and portfolio maintenance and strategy and understands that a patent portfolio grows through stages with the company and patent filing and prosecution strategies need to adjust throughout the life cycle.
Brian has experience working with many different technologies, including autonomous vehicles, machine learning, application security, multi-factor authentication, content management systems, synchronization of content, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), fintech, point-of-sale systems, payment back-end systems, internet-of-things (IOT) device, virtual twin systems, sensor fusion systems, blockchain and other distributed ledgers, mobile wallets, online media stores, networking technology, software-defined networks (SDN), collaboration tools including presence applications and video conferencing applications, computer peripherals especially suited for gaming, virtual assistants, desalination systems, polymerization monitoring systems, and medical devices.
While the majority of Brian’s experience pertains to software and electrical engineering inventions, his technical background is best suited to cross over technologies that blend software, sensors, and biological aspects, such as physiological sensors and machine learning algorithms for evaluating physiological parameters.
Brian is adept at navigating 35 U.S.C. 101 subject matter eligibility issues. He has significant, hard-won experience from prosecuting software patent applications and more specifically advertising and financial technology-related patent application. Brian has successfully gotten many of his applications facing subject matter eligibility challenges allowed during prosecution and appeal. Several clients have transferred cases believed to be lost causes to Brian where he successfully achieved allowance.
Brian is particularly well-suited to understand and cooperate with inventors because he is also a co-inventor of Polsinelli’s PatentCAD tool. PatentCAD uses natural language processing to assist in the drafting of patent applications with greater quality and consistency. The tool has several first-of-its-kind features which better reflect the realities of drafting quality patent applications than other tools of its kind.
Brian occasionally likes to mix work with play. To stay up to date on the latest technology trends, he enjoys recreation in virtual reality using his headset at home and attending (virtually and in-person) conferences on the topic. Likewise, he has a keen interest in cryptocurrencies and attends conferences in this space too. In the physical world, most of Brian’s non-work time is spent hiking, biking, and camping with his wife and daughters and training for marathons.
