Naira Simmons

Partner | Intellectual Property
Co-Chair, Intellectual Property Department

About

Naira’s practice is primarily focused on domestic and foreign patent prosecution for biotech, pharmaceutical, and healthcare technology-driven companies. Her counseling of mid-stage and established companies includes collaborating closely with in-house counsel to implement their IP development and enforcement strategies.

  • Naira’s strategic counseling of early-stage companies includes developing comprehensive and tailored IP strategies that maximize patent protection for their lead products and prepares them for successful funding rounds, partnering, and commercialization. Naira assists clients with IP matters pertaining to financing, licensing, SPAC, M&A, and partnership deals. Naira also helps companies and investors with IP due diligence.

    Prior to her legal career, Naira trained as a scientist at Weill Cornell, primarily in biochemistry. Naira is the primary author of scientific and legal publications. Naira held various fellowships during training, including graduate fellowships from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

    Naira has previously been an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati (WSGR) and a Partner at FisherBroyles LLP.

Practices

  • Patents

  • IP Transactions and Licensing

Admissions

  • California

  • U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Education

  • University of California, Hastings College of the Law, J.D., Cum Laude

  • Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University, Ph.D.

  • Hunter College of the City University of New York, B.A., Cum Laude

Experience

  • FisherBroyles, LLP

  • Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Publications

  • Naira Simmons, Saving the horseshoe crab: A synthetic alternative to horseshoe crab blood for endotoxin detection, PLoS Biol 16(10): e2006607 (2018).

  • Naira Simmons, Putting Yourself in the Shoes of a Patent Examiner: Overview of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Patent Examiner Production (Count) System, 17(1) The John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law 32-41 (2017).

  • Naira Simmons, Why the Supreme Court Should Use Ariosa v. Sequenom to Provide Further Guidance on 35 U.S.C. § 101 Patent Eligibility, 16 Chi. -Kent J. Intell. Prop. 112 (2016).

  • Rezende N.C., (2012) Benefiting the Ones Who Can Benefit the Most. Cornell Daily News. Feb. 24th 2012. Vol. 128 No 96

  • Rezende N.C., et al. (2011). Rex1 (Zfp42) Null Mice Show Impaired Testicular Function, Abnormal Testis Morphology, and Aberrant Gene Expression. Developmental Biology. 2011 Aug. 15; 356(2):370-82. PMID: 21641340

  • Rezende, N.C., et al. (2009). Regulation of stem cell pluripotency and differentiation involves a mutual regulatory circuit of the NANOG, OCT4, and SOX2 pluripotency transcription factors with polycomb repressive complexes and stem cell microRNAs. Stem Cells and Development. 2009 Sep.; 18, 1093-1108. PMID: 194805