Unlike my colleagues in the firm, intellectual property law is my first career. I attended law school right after studying Chemistry at Dartmouth. At what is now the University of New Hampshire School of Law (then Franklin Pierce Law Center) I earned a joint JD/LLM degree in intellectual property. While in law school I started here at the law firm as a summer clerk in 2001, and have been here ever since.

 

     Over the years, I have divided my practice between patents and trademarks. In patents, I have been privileged to work on applications and searches in a wide variety of fields including electronics, medical devices, semiconductors, optics, software, and mechanical devices. These may seem like a strange fit for a chemist, but physical chemistry and a foundational understanding of physics has been helpful in understanding the wide range of technologies presented in our inventors' disclosures, and in translating those disclosures into patent language. The challenge of patent prosecution, engaging with examiners at the patent office and our agents in other countries to obtain granted patents of useful scope, remains my primary focus.

 

     But during my time here, my practice has also gradually evolved with experience to include trademarks.  I am now our lead attorney in our growing trademark practice. With the able assistance of our excellent paralegal staff, I enjoy the recurring opportunities I have to assist clients in selection, clearance, and prosecution of trademark registrations both here and abroad, and help them protect marks from infringers.

 

     I reside here in Nashua where I participate in local civic affairs

and I am a parishioner at St. Patrick's Catholic Church.

 

     I do hope that you will share this information with someone you know that might have need for the skills and services that I or others in our firm can provide.  Please feel free to contact me anytime. Thanks!

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Andrew P. Cernota

acernota@mcr-ip.com 

(603)886-6100