April M. Capati, Of Counsel, has over a decade of experience in providing her clients with business-driven and cost-effective results for all of their intellectual property needs. Her practice focuses on global patent counseling and procurement, as well as representing and counseling clients in complex patent litigations. Ranging from sole proprietorships to Fortune 500 companies, Ms. Capati’s diverse clients benefit from her expertise in protecting and leveraging their innovation and ensuring marketplace exclusivity.
Managing and building the intellectual property portfolios of her clients, Ms. Capati works closely with inventors and in-house counsel to procure the most valuable rights from their technology consistent with the clients’ business objectives and goals. She prepares and prosecutes utility and design patent applications in a wide range of technologies, including medical device, microelectronic packaging, consumer electronics, computer science, consumer health care, autonomous vehicles, and related mechanical technologies. She also counsels her clients and renders opinions on issues of patentability and freedom to operate.
Design patents are another area in which Ms. Capati focuses her patent practice. Due, in part, to her leadership in this practice area, the number of domestic and foreign design patent applications filed and issued on behalf of Lerner David’s clients continues to grow. She pioneered Lerner David’s practice and procedures for design patent application filings through the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs. In 2015, statistics compiled by Intellectual Property Today: Top Patent Firms placed Lerner David among the top 25 U.S. patent firms having the highest number of U.S. design patents issued in 2014.
An experienced litigator, Ms. Capati has been involved with all phases of litigation from the initial pre-suit investigation all the way up to appeal. She served as a member of the trial team which secured a jury verdict of patent infringement against a competitor of one of Lerner David’s Fortune 500 medical device clients. Additionally, she was a member of the litigation team that successfully settled a patent case wherein over 50 patents were asserted against another client. This case was considered to be one of the most complex and largest patent cases ever litigated.
Ms. Capati earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law, where she was an Associate Editor of the Maryland Law Review. During law school, she received her formative training in patent law and was selected to serve as a research assistant for the now Honorable Kimberly A. Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Ms. Capati graduated magna cum laude and attained the highest academic standing in her undergraduate class for civil engineering with an environmental emphasis from the George Washington University.
Prior to joining Lerner David, Ms. Capati served as Law Clerk on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to The Honorable Ellen L. Hollander, now a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Maryland. Ms. Capati is a member of the Maryland and New Jersey State Bars and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.