Tani Chen

Tani Chen counsels clients in patent prosecution in a wide variety of areas, including biomolecular engineering, nanotechnology, tissue engineering, drug delivery, fuel cells, chemical processes, and analytical devices.

• Counseled several major universities to identify technologies of interest to various start-up companies, including identifying dominating and potentially interfering subject matter that was of use during licensing negotiations.
• Advised client on the best way to maximize IP protection in new "emergent" area formed by the merger of different fields of technologies, including both patent and copyright protection.
• Provided strategic advice to start-up company to put the company in an optimum position to maximize patent protection, prior to finalization and implementation of the company’s initial business plan.
• Wrote several key patent applications for client under severe time pressures that later proved to be vital to client’s long-term goals.

Prior to joining the firm, Tani was a Research Fellow with the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital and Shriners Hospital for Children. His research was in the area of cell and tissue engineering, and focused on various engineering approaches for preserving biological materials, including under cryological conditions as well as under vacuum and desiccant conditions. He has co-authored several papers discussing techniques for storing mammalian cells at various temperatures by using custom-engineered proteins to internally load the cells with specific sugars that are able to form amorphous matrices upon dehydration.

Tani’s doctoral work focused on techniques for drug delivery across human skin, including using a pulsed, high-voltage electric field as an alternative to needle-based drug delivery systems. Aspects of his work included the design and optimization of the electrodes, molecular engineering of optimal drug molecules, and predicting the molecular flux across the skin as a function of the applied electrical parameters.

Tani has also performed several research studies and design projects as a consultant for the Dow Chemical Company, and the U.S. Army at the Natick Research, Development, and Engineering Laboratories.

American Bar Association

American Chemical Society

Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts

Boston Patent Law Association

Materials Research Society

Tani has also been named one of Massachusetts Super Lawyers’ “Rising Stars” in the field of intellectual property law.

Tani has a patent in the area of controlling molecular transport under pulsed electric field conditions by adding certain chemicals during pulsing. He was also the lead author of two of the top 10 cited articles between 2000-2009 in the scientific journal Cryobiology.

Tani ran a weekly radio show for a number of years on WMBR, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s radio station. He also was involved in station management, and directed the training of new DJs at the station. A paper about some of his on-air work was published in the Skeptical Inquirer.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, B.S., Chemical Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S., Chemical Engineering Practice

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sc.D., Chemical Engineering

Suffolk University Law School, J.D., cum laude

Massachusetts

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

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