In the 21st-century global business environment, a clear intellectual property (IP) strategy is a business necessity. Intellectual property law is more important than ever before, yet IP budgets are shrinking and an “anti-patent” legal climate is emerging that multiplies the challenges of securing IP rights. Intellectual property attorneys have become indispensable adjuncts to companies’ executive teams.  As a dedicated patent lawyer in San Francisco, I partner with technology clients to understand their businesses; to capture the innovations central to their business goals; and to translate them to protected IP assets.  I have spent most of my career in the San Francisco Bay area and have served Silicon Valley as a patent practitioner for 20 years, representing all types of clients, from individual inventors and startups to major universities and Fortune 500 companies. It’s no accident that I became a patent attorney. I have a passion for helping people realize their business goals and their dreams and I am fascinated by unusual technological niches. During my time as a corporate librarian in the biotech world, I got the opportunity to explore patenting and patent law and was attracted to the intellectual challenge it offered. I was instrumental in securing a number of the assets, notably cookie technology, in the AOL patent portfolio, recently sold to Microsoft Corporation for more than one billion dollars.