Ryan Phelan is a partner and patent attorney at Marshall Gerstein. He discusses his journey from a background in computer science and fintech to becoming a prominent IP attorney serving clients in the MedTech industry and beyond. He shares insights on the importance of protecting intellectual property, especially for startups, and the burgeoning role of AI in medical technology. This succinct yet fascinating conversation highlights the critical intersection of law, technology, and medical innovation.
Guest links: https://www.marshallip.com | https://www.patentnext.com/
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Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.
PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Episode 058 - Ryan Phelan
[00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
[00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
[00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.
[00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.
[00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
[00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and I am so looking forward to my conversation today with Ryan Phelan. Ryan is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago based intellectual property law firm, Marshall Gerstein, where he counsels medtech companies on protecting their valuable IP. Ryan ultimately believes that AI is an important technology to embrace, but cautions medical device and related companies to approach it pragmatically, developing a policy to govern and protect intangible assets and innovation.
All right. Well, thank you so much for being here, Ryan. I'm so excited to speak with you today.
[00:01:29] Ryan Phelan: Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Lindsey.
[00:01:31] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. Well, I'd love if you'd start off by sharing a little bit about your background and what led you to medtech.
[00:01:39] Ryan Phelan: Sure, absolutely. So I'm an attorney by trade. And I started off in probably a different place than most people in MedTech, but I have a computer science degree and I worked in industry first for Accenture, doing a lot of programming and consulting in the FinTech world. So, high frequency trading and programming some pretty complicated data algorithms in order to trade stocks and bonds and securities, and things like this. That let me see aspects of intellectual property that people were doing with respect to the code I was writing.
So I got curious with IP and law, and that led me to law school, Northwestern Law, in pursuing a joint JD, MBA program, which I finished in 2010. And I went into IP law with a passion for technology, pretty much in the computing space. And then in the last decade or so, IP practitioners, not unlike doctors, like to practice in specific areas and one of the ones that I focused on is software medical devices. And so that, that kind of led me into the realm of medtech.
[00:02:48] Lindsey Dinneen: Very nice. Okay. So you have had such an interesting career trajectory and I'm wondering, back in the day, say you're a six year old Ryan, could six year old Ryan have predicted that you would be a lawyer and particularly intellectual property?
[00:03:04] Ryan Phelan: Absolutely not. I mean, first of all nobody in my family, at least immediate family, was a lawyer. And so going to law school was not on the radar. I grew up in Louisiana in a small town, basically farm life, so certainly technology and stuff like that wasn't available in the city. But I did have a pas
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