People > Office: Ann Arbor

Chelsea is a member of Varnum’s Intellectual Property Team, with extensive experience in patent prosecution, trademark and copyright protection, and preparation and review of IP agreements. She has prepared and prosecuted numerous domestic and foreign utility patent applications within the biological, chemical, and mechanical arts, including technologies related to chemical compositions, polymers science, biomedical devices and associated methods, and diagnostic applications including cell-free nucleic acids, extracellular vesicles, liquid biopsy, blood collection tubes and cancer screenings. Chelsea regularly conducts prior art searches, freedom-to-operate analyses, and provides infringement and invalidity opinions. She also has experience in intellectual property litigation involving patent and trademark infringement, trade secret misappropriation and unfair competition.

Chelsea frequently drafts and negotiates a wide array of intellectual property agreements, including those for grant-funded projects, IP ownership, licensing, and research collaborations. She has extensive experience with joint development agreements, facilitating partnerships where multiple entities collaborate on research and development, ensuring clear ownership and usage rights from the outset. Chelsea is also well-versed in technology transfer agreements, guiding the movement of innovations from research institutions to the marketplace, particularly in academic and industrial settings. Additionally, she conducts due diligence on intellectual property assets in the context of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and other changes of ownership. Through her work, Chelsea ensures clients protect and maximize the value of their intellectual property across various sectors and jurisdictions.

Chelsea also assists clients in domestic and international trademark matters, from the inception of a mark to its registration. She provides strategic counsel on trademark availability and adoption, regularly performing clearance searches, as well as the management and enforcement of trademark portfolios in the United States and abroad. Moreover, Chelsea routinely represents clients in cancellation and opposition proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

In the realm of copyright law, Chelsea works with writers, artists, photographers, and other creatives on copyright matters, including the filing of copyright registrations and the preparation of clearance reports and fair use analyses. She has successfully brought numerous infringement and declaration of noninfringement claims to the Copyright Claims Board (CCB), a three-member tribunal within the Copyright Office that provides an efficient option to her clients, resolving copyright disputes outside of federal court.

In addition to her practice, Chelsea serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Arts & and Entertainment Law Clinic at the University of Detroit Mercy College of Law, where she provides pro bono legal services to musicians, independent film makers, writers, artists, and the like. During law school, Chelsea served an extensive, 10-week externship with the USPTO’s Patent Experience Extern Program and Patent Training Academy at the Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She worked alongside patent examiners in a unit that oversees various biotech, chemical and pharmaceutical technologies to review patent applications for grant consideration and conducted prior art searches. She also delivered presentations on patent and trademark matters to small business owners and aspiring inventors at USPTO informational events.