Bill Weimer is a partner in the Faegre Baker Daniels intellectual property group and previously was the leader of our patent practice. Prior to joining Faegre Baker Daniels, Bill was a senior intellectual property attorney at Imation Corp. responsible for counseling several operational divisions and staff groups. These responsibilities involved many aspects of intellectual property with an emphasis on global IP strategy, portfolio management, agreements and litigation management; patent opinions and prosecution; and trade secret protection. Bill negotiated and prepared a variety of IP agreements including joint development, license, M&A, and confidentiality agreements.

Before his tenure at Imation, Bill was a patent attorney within the legal department at 3M. Prior to that, Bill was a product and process development engineer for nine years in 3M's medical and surgical divisions. While within the 3M legal department, Bill focused on patent preparation/prosecution, freedom to operate, and opinions as well as IP transactions and disputes using his engineering and product commercialization background to better communicate and work with 3M's inventors and business leaders.

As a result of his in-house experience at 3M and Imation and his subsequent private practice experience at Faegre Baker Daniels, Bill now focuses his practice on:

• building and managing cost-effective global patent portfolios
• carrying out freedom-to-operate investigations
• drafting patent non-infringement and invalidity opinions
• counseling clients on trade secret protection
• conducting IP due diligence for complex corporate transactions
• negotiating and drafting IP agreements
• managing and settling patent and trade secret litigation, and
• conducting ex parte and inter partes patent reexaminations

Bill's practice involves aspects of the wind energy, biofuels processing, clean technology, natural resources, construction, medical devices, and  medical devices.