Mark A. Frentrup, Ph.D.

Dr. Frentrup joined the firm after an 18 year career in industrial research. His legal practice includes preparation and prosecution of pioneering patents as well as opinions to support clients' commercial strategies. His clearance and invalidity opinions are marked by expert level technical analysis and rigorous legal analysis. He specializes in a wide variety of chemical and mechanical arts, with particular focus in organic and polymer chemistry. 

Dr. Frentrup also specializes in planning and executing patent strategies that cover a client’s technology with multiple filings. He has written patent portfolios in such areas as anticancer drugs, lithium ion batteries, coatings, advanced materials for medical implants, sorbent technology for reducing mercury and other emissions from coal burning, nanotechnology, fuel cells, and fluorocarbon elastomers for seal applications.

In the polymer area, he has experience in synthesis, materials properties, and industrial applications of polyurethanes, organic coatings and film forming polymers, polyolefins, natural and synthetic rubber, fluorocarbon thermoplastics and elastomers, thermoplastic elastomers, dispersions, and nonionic surfactants. In the Pharma area, he has prepared and prosecuted compound per se patents covering active agents for treatment of CNS disorders and various cancers, and has extensive experience in organic synthesis, in substructure and Markush structure searching, and in structure activity relationships. 

He has prepared patent landscaping reports for active ingredients, and has supported ANDA filings under the Hatch Waxman Act with paragraph IV certifications, notification letters, and opinions assessing the validity of Orange Book patents.  As an undergraduate, he spent three summers in organic synthesis at the University of Texas and Brown University. His synthetic experience includes lithium enolate chemistry, photochemical synthesis, cobalt organometallic synthesis, chromatographic separations, and characterization of reaction products using proton nmr. He also worked in an x-ray crystallography lab, gaining experience in crystal growth, data collection, and solution of small molecule structures using both heavy atoms and direct methods. He was then a biochemistry research fellow at Texas before entering graduate school. While at Michigan State, Dr. Frentrup held a Graduate Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. His dissertation under Prof. A. Tulinsky dealt with determination of enzyme structure and function using x-ray crystallography. 

After earning his Ph.D., he joined the research labs of BASF Corporation, where he moved from the lab to the patent department, performing state of the art, patentability, infringement, and invalidity searches in all areas of BASF research.

Education

Professional Affiliations

• Patent Information Users Group

Languages

• German, professional working proficiency 
• French, Russian, Spanish, and Italian, limited working proficiency 
• Dr. Frentrup works with a network of foreign patent associates to obtain international patents for clients. In this work he is assisted by associates with fluency in Chinese, Korean and Japanese.