Scott D. Patterson

As a partner in the Business and Finance Department and Chair of the Intellectual Property & Technology Practice Group, Mr. Patterson centers his practice on technology law, primarily in the information technology field. In his additional role as Chair of Saul Ewing's Technology Committee, Mr. Patterson oversees all of the Firm's own technology acquisitions and projects.

His technology law practice, on behalf of both customers and vendors, focuses on systems acquisition and software licensing transactions, particularly in the healthcare, life sciences, financial, and manufacturing industries. He also advises clients on e-commerce and telecommunications projects, and provides counseling on data protection, privacy, and general intellectual property issues. Although his primary focus is transactional work, Mr. Patterson also negotiates and litigates technology-related disputes, and established the principle in the 3rd Circuit that many software transactions are governed by the Uniform Commercial Code.

Mr. Patterson's transactional and counseling skills benefit from both his years of handling court proceedings, arbitrations, and mediations arising out of broken contracts, and his hands-on experience as a technology purchaser and primary attorney liaison to the Firm's IS department.

Representative recent transactions have included the outsourcing of a regional health system's entire information technology function, development of a facility for remote oversight of multiple intensive care units, negotiation of a Fortune 500 manufacturer's global telecommunications services contract, deployment of advertising management software across fifteen regional cable systems, and provision of a unified crime-data collection system to a county and dozens of its police departments.

On the technology-transfer side, Mr. Patterson has represented parties to collaboration, development, and commercialization agreements, including related patent licenses, for both pharmaceutical and biotechnology products.

Mr. Patterson is a frequent Pennsylvania Bar Institute technology panelist. He has also given presentations on technology licensing, electronic commerce, Internet issues, and related topics to organizations including the American Corporate Counsel Assn., the Insurance Society of Pennsylvania, Temple Law School, CN8, Inside Digital Media, and others. He is a member of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) and the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS).