Darby & Darby Announces Two New Principals and Three New Senior Counsel.

NEW YORK -- Intellectual property law firm Darby & Darby P.C. elected Samuel S. Woodley, Ph.D., a shareholder of the firm, and promoted associates Thomas J. Bean, Abigail Rubinstein and Jamie L. Wiegand to senior counsel.

In addition, Michael J. Keller joins the firm's Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., office as a principal after serving as the head of the biomedical practice group at Lott & Friedland. Keller focuses on therapeutic, diagnostic and medical device products.

Samuel S. Woodley, resident in the firm's New York office, marks a full career with Darby & Darby, having grown from patent agent and law clerk to shareholder of the firm. Active in the chemical and life sciences practice group, Woodley has several years experience in both U.S. and international patent strategy and procurement, as well as intellectual property litigation, patent interference practice, due diligence, infringement and validity opinion counseling in the biomedical arts.

Thomas J. Bean maintains his practice in the firm's New York office and focuses on patent procurement in the areas of voice and data communications systems, consumer electronics, optical networking and interconnection technologies. Bean's electronics and software expertise stems from his work experience with AT&T Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies where he managed manufacturing, R&D and software quality assurance. Bean is the co-author of several AT&T Bell Laboratories R&D "Best Practices" handbooks and produced a number of invited papers and presentations on the topic of R&D benchmarking.

Abigail Rubinstein's practice in the firm's New York office encompasses all aspects of copyright and trademark law, both in litigation and in the transactional arena. Rubinstein's significant experience handling false advertising and unfair competition extends into all realms of cyber law as she counsels clients on domain name registration, copyright and trademark prosecution and enforcement in the U.S. and internationally.

Jamie L. Wiegand, resident in the firm's Seattle office, is a registered patent attorney with extensive experience in computing security, electronic commerce, estimation theory, public key infrastructures, real-time simulations and related technologies. In addition to his strength in patent prosecution, Wiegand is a skilled litigator having led numerous successful cases in arbitration and copyright infringement for the firm. Prior to his legal career, Wiegand spent more than 20 years at The Boeing Company as a manager and systems architect for computing infrastructures.

Darby & Darby P.C. is a full-service intellectual property firm focusing on patents, copyrights, trademarks and false advertising for more than 110 years. As one of the oldest and largest intellectual property firms in the United States, with close to 100 professionals, Darby & Darby has long been important in pioneering and precedent-setting IP matters. The firm has offices in New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C., San Jose, Calif., Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and Frankfurt, Germany.