Daniel A. Gajewski is a director in Sterne Kessler’s Mechanical & Design Practice Group and a co-chair of the Patent Prosecution Practice. He has over 10 years of experience helping clients achieve strategic utility and design patent protection and navigate the IP landscape for their products. Dan is currently Vice Chair of the Intellectual Property Owners Association Industrial Design committee.
The appearance—or industrial design—of a new product can be just as valuable as its utility, particularly in keeping knock-off products off the market. Dan specializes in developing a full product-based patent protection strategy. This means working with inventors to zero in on a new product’s innovative features, whether they be structural, aesthetic, or both. Based on this, Dan prepares design and utility patent application strategies that intermesh, working to ensure that neither application is drafted or prosecuted in a way that limits the other.
Dan’s clients find his expertise in foreign design application prosecution particularly helpful. Since international design laws are much less harmonized than their utility counterparts, developing and executing an international design application strategy is uniquely challenging. He is well-versed in the design idiosyncrasies of the most high-value foreign jurisdictions, and works closely with local counsel in any country in which his clients seek design protection.
Dan’s post-grant work with issued patents also spans both design and utility patents. He has experience challenging the validity of issued patents on behalf of his clients to protect their freedom to operate, as well as defending the patents of his clients when challenged by others.
Dan specializes in protecting mechanical technologies and product designs. His work spans a variety of technologies, with particular focus on consumer products, packaging, and retail.
Dan earned his J.D., with honors, from The George Washington University Law School and his B.S. in mechanical engineering, summa cum laude, from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
- J.D., The George Washington University Law School, With Honors
- B.S., Mechanical Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo, summa cum laude
- District of Columbia
- New York
- United States Patent & Trademark Office
- Vice Chair, Intellectual Property Owners Association Industrial Design Committee