Lorna Tanner

Practice Areas

Lorna Tanner is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group in Sheppard Mullin’s Silicon Valley and San Francisco offices and is the former leader of the firm’s Life Sciences team.

Lorna develops global patent portfolios for drugs and biologics. Her practice is centered on counseling dynamic startups and mid-size pharma companies. She has a highly focused practice that aligns patent portfolios for late stage and approved therapeutics with specific business needs, such as product launch, asset acquisition, and third party challenges. She performs due diligence analyses on patent portfolios for financings, mergers and acquisitions, and renders opinions on infringement, inventorship, and freedom-to-operate.

Lorna’s technical emphasis is in pharmaceutically active small molecules in clinical development with a primary focus on developing and executing patent strategies for late-stage and approved drugs. She has experience in a variety of other technologies, including: biologics such as antibodies, modified proteins and viruses; biopolymers; drug delivery, including pulmonary, topical, and pharmaceutical formulations; and medical devices, including aesthetic devices, syringes, catheters and embolic coils. Lorna also has experience with green technologies and agricultural products.