Prominent Intellectual Property & Technology attorney Christopher C. Bolten has joined global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP as a shareholder in the Life Sciences & Medical Technology Practice. He will be based in the firm’s San Diego office.
Trained as a mechanical engineer, Bolten’s practice focuses on medical technology (MedTech). He helps medical device and digital health companies across the United States, Europe, and Israel build patent portfolios to protect and enforce their intellectual property (IP). Bolten also provides IP due diligence services for venture capital firms and advises on associated risks related to their MedTech investments.
“Health care companies are now thinking more like technology companies, so Chris’s area of practice is an essential addition to our robust IP and Patents and Innovation Strategies practices,” said G. Michelle Ferreira, senior vice president of the firm and co-managing shareholder of the San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices. “He has a broad cross-border practice that runs the gamut from startups seeking FDA approval for single devices to well-established multinational public companies; in other words, Chris’s clients could benefit from Greenberg Traurig’s vast global platform.”
Bolten has been advising digital health companies using artificial intelligence and machine learning before “AI” became household terminology. Whether it was working with companies that used AI to assist surgical robots or to analyze heart signals to help diagnose cardiac abnormalities like atrial fibrillation – a feature now found in FDA-approved consumer smartwatches – Bolten has been at the forefront of AI’s overlap with digital health for many years, where the goal has always been to enhance patient care.
“I worked with Chris when he was a junior attorney, and it’s been a joy to see his rise here in Southern California, where he is well-known in the tech and legal spaces,” Shareholder David A. Gay, Ph.D. said. “Chris will perfectly complement the existing life sciences practice we have developed both in San Diego and across the firm.”
Bolten’s previous work with wireless communication and cellular technology has come full circle; he has seen his own practice areas of communications and medical devices converge. More digital health companies are creating software and collecting data with the goal of helping patients receive targeted diagnoses or medical treatment, often with the help of AI.
“Greenberg Traurig’s footprint and global platform overlap neatly with where my clients are based,” Bolten said. “The firm has a stellar reputation in the IP and patent prosecution community, and I could not be more excited to join a first-class group of attorneys.”
Bolten received his J.D. from the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, magna cum laude, and a B.S. in mechanical engineering, with honors, from Michigan State University. He is admitted to practice law in California and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and District Courts in California, Colorado, and Texas. Bolten joins the firm from Eversheds Sutherland.