Stephana Patton (’02) Follows Science to Intellectual Property Law
As general counsel for BioDelivery Sciences in Raleigh, NC, Patton combines her interests.
Growing up in Michigan and Florida, Stephana Patton (’02) always loved to cook. She wonders, now, if that is why she was drawn to chemistry in school. “Science always seemed like an extension of cooking,” she says, “and it just made sense to me. Not that it was easy, but it came naturally.”
She spent her high school years helping conduct citrus research in a US Department of Agriculture lab in central Florida, and majored in chemistry at Erskine College in South Carolina. As graduation approached, she struggled to choose between medical school and pursuing a doctorate. “My professors talked me into the PhD,” she says, “they felt my skills would be better served on that path, and they were right.” She attended Emory University and completed her PhD in biochemistry, cell and developmental biology.
“About half way through the doctorate program at Emory, I began to think about my future,” she says. “At the time, I was working with Steven Warren in a Howard Hughes-funded lab and he had relative complete freedom to explore within the context of the lab. It was an amazing journey in the science world.” However, knowing she would spend her career tied to National Institutes of Health grants combined with the lack of control over the location of the right opportunities to teach and conduct research made life as a professor less and less appealing as time went on.
She began to look outside academia for a way to use her science background when she discovered patent law. “It made me very excited,” she says, “I knew I could be on the cutting edge of science and discovery, and although I wouldn’t be doing the science myself I would be in a position to help the people who did.” When it came to choosing a law school, Boston University School of Law’s highly ranked intellectual property program was the perfect fit. The location was a big factor, too. As a center of biochemistry, technology, and learning, it made sense to Patton to be in Boston for her next step. “I just leapt in, without talking to anyone, I applied to BU Law and went!”
Once in law school, Patton decided against the IP law concentration. “I wanted to explore more of the law, for a broader background,” she says. “Professor Robert Bone [now with the University of Texas at Austin School of Law] opened my eyes to a world where the law was integral to every aspect of how we live and interact with each other. I wanted to learn about tax law and policy, and understand why a law existed and the framework behind it.”
Patton held a part-time job throughout law school, first as a patent agent, and later as an associate with Banner & Witcoff after she passed the patent bar. Shortly after graduating from BU Law, she joined Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge (now Edwards Wildman Palmer) and spent four years there. “One of my clients, Salix Pharmaceuticals, began to take up more and more of my time,” she says. “I felt I was getting too busy to attend to them properly, and their needs were growing rapidly. They asked me to join them full time and I moved in-house.”
After seven years as associate vice president and then vice president of intellectual property and licensing at Salix, Patton joined BioDelivery Sciences in Raleigh, North Carolina as general counsel. She is responsible for all of the company’s legal and intellectual property needs as well as the commercial compliance office, which includes pursuing FDA compliance and mitigating antitrust issues.
While the intellectual property work takes up half of her time, Patton has come to appreciate promotional and marketing compliance aspect of her job. Because the company produces drugs for pain management and addiction medicine, Patton notes the need for sensitivity in the way they market the products. “It’s a sensitive disease and a nationally explosive issue, and we have to take care with our approach,” she says, “but getting to help these patients recover and function in their daily lives because of what we produce is what keeps me in the pharmaceutical industry. I love being able to have that kind of impact.”