PROFESSIONALS

April M. Capati

image-April M. Capati

Strategic IP Counsel with Business-Driven Perspective

Ms. Capati brings over a decade of experience delivering actionable and cost-effective intellectual property strategies that align with clients’ commercial goals. She advises a diverse range of clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies on how to protect and leverage their innovations to support product exclusivity, competitive positioning, and long-term value creation.

Leader in Design Patent Strategy and Protection

Ms. Capati is a leader of the firm’s design patent practice.  She has developed and scaled domestic and international design patent protection strategies for clients across numerous industries. She has been a driving force to increase awareness of the value that design patents can bring to an IP portfolio.  Ms. Capati has been quoted and recognized in Law360® as a thought leader in design patent law, reflecting her leadership in this evolving area.

Collaborative IP Portfolio Development & Enforcement Across Teams

Ms. Capati works hands-on with inventors, engineers, and in-house legal teams, including C-suite, to build strategically aligned IP patent portfolios. She prepares and prosecutes U.S. and international design and utility patent applications in a wide range of technologies including medical devices, autonomous vehicles, electronics, and software. She is also skilled in brand protection and securing global trademark registrations.  Her IP counsel includes patentability, clearance for adaptation of marks, freedom-to-operate, and risk assessments, providing stakeholders with clear, business-relevant recommendations to guide product launches, R&D, and acquisitions.

Litigation Insight that Informs Risk and Enforcement Strategy

With deep experience across the patent litigation lifecycle, Ms. Capati brings practical insight to risk evaluation and enforcement readiness. She has been part of trial teams that have successfully and asserted and defended against patent and trademark infringement in high-stakes cases, including a jury verdict against a medical device competitor and resolution of a multi-patent litigation for a Fortune 500 company involving over 50 patents.  This litigation experience informs her ability to counsel clients on balancing enforcement options with broader commercial considerations.

Judicial Clerkship and Legal Foundations

Ms. Capati began her legal career as a judicial law clerk on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to the Honorable Ellen L. Hollander (now a U.S. District Court Judge).   She earned her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law, where she served as Associate Editor of the Maryland Law Review and was selected by the now Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to serve as her research assistant. Ms. Capati graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University, where she received the Benjamin C. Cruickshanks award for graduating with the highest GPA in her major.

April M. Capati, Of Counsel, has over a decade of experience in providing her clients with business-driven and cost-effective results for all of their intellectual property needs. Her practice focuses on global patent counseling and procurement, as well as representing and counseling clients in complex patent litigations. Ranging from sole proprietorships to Fortune 500 companies, Ms. Capati’s diverse clients benefit from her expertise in protecting and leveraging their innovation and ensuring marketplace exclusivity.

Managing and building the intellectual property portfolios of her clients, Ms. Capati works closely with inventors and in-house counsel to procure the most valuable rights from their technology consistent with the clients’ business objectives and goals. She prepares and prosecutes utility and design patent applications in a wide range of technologies, including medical device, microelectronic packaging, consumer electronics, computer science, consumer health care, autonomous vehicles, and related mechanical technologies. She also counsels her clients and renders opinions on issues of patentability and freedom to operate.

Design patents are another area in which Ms. Capati focuses her patent practice. Due, in part, to her leadership in this practice area, the number of domestic and foreign design patent applications filed and issued on behalf of Lerner David’s clients continues to grow. She pioneered Lerner David’s practice and procedures for design patent application filings through the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs. In 2015, statistics compiled by Intellectual Property Today: Top Patent Firms placed Lerner David among the top 25 U.S. patent firms having the highest number of U.S. design patents issued in 2014.

An experienced litigator, Ms. Capati has been involved with all phases of litigation from the initial pre-suit investigation all the way up to appeal. She served as a member of the trial team which secured a jury verdict of patent infringement against a competitor of one of Lerner David’s Fortune 500 medical device clients. Additionally, she was a member of the litigation team that successfully settled a patent case wherein over 50 patents were asserted against another client. This case was considered to be one of the most complex and largest patent cases ever litigated.

Ms. Capati earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law, where she was an Associate Editor of the Maryland Law Review. During law school, she received her formative training in patent law and was selected to serve as a research assistant for the now Honorable Kimberly A. Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Ms. Capati graduated magna cum laude and attained the highest academic standing in her undergraduate class for civil engineering with an environmental emphasis from the George Washington University.

Prior to joining Lerner David, Ms. Capati served as Law Clerk on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to The Honorable Ellen L. Hollander, now a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Maryland. Ms. Capati is a member of the Maryland and New Jersey State Bars and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

  • Overview

    Strategic IP Counsel with Business-Driven Perspective

    Ms. Capati brings over a decade of experience delivering actionable and cost-effective intellectual property strategies that align with clients’ commercial goals. She advises a diverse range of clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies on how to protect and leverage their innovations to support product exclusivity, competitive positioning, and long-term value creation.

    Leader in Design Patent Strategy and Protection

    Ms. Capati is a leader of the firm’s design patent practice.  She has developed and scaled domestic and international design patent protection strategies for clients across numerous industries. She has been a driving force to increase awareness of the value that design patents can bring to an IP portfolio.  Ms. Capati has been quoted and recognized in Law360® as a thought leader in design patent law, reflecting her leadership in this evolving area.

    Collaborative IP Portfolio Development & Enforcement Across Teams

    Ms. Capati works hands-on with inventors, engineers, and in-house legal teams, including C-suite, to build strategically aligned IP patent portfolios. She prepares and prosecutes U.S. and international design and utility patent applications in a wide range of technologies including medical devices, autonomous vehicles, electronics, and software. She is also skilled in brand protection and securing global trademark registrations.  Her IP counsel includes patentability, clearance for adaptation of marks, freedom-to-operate, and risk assessments, providing stakeholders with clear, business-relevant recommendations to guide product launches, R&D, and acquisitions.

    Litigation Insight that Informs Risk and Enforcement Strategy

    With deep experience across the patent litigation lifecycle, Ms. Capati brings practical insight to risk evaluation and enforcement readiness. She has been part of trial teams that have successfully and asserted and defended against patent and trademark infringement in high-stakes cases, including a jury verdict against a medical device competitor and resolution of a multi-patent litigation for a Fortune 500 company involving over 50 patents.  This litigation experience informs her ability to counsel clients on balancing enforcement options with broader commercial considerations.

    Judicial Clerkship and Legal Foundations

    Ms. Capati began her legal career as a judicial law clerk on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to the Honorable Ellen L. Hollander (now a U.S. District Court Judge).   She earned her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law, where she served as Associate Editor of the Maryland Law Review and was selected by the now Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to serve as her research assistant. Ms. Capati graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University, where she received the Benjamin C. Cruickshanks award for graduating with the highest GPA in her major.

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