Roshan P. Shrestha
Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Intellectual property

It’s impressive enough to build a successful intellectual property practice, as attorney Roshan Shrestha has done. But Roshan even before picking up law had already crafted a career as an accomplished scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

This ceaseless ambition has fueled Roshan’s climb to becoming one of the Chicago area’s most respected intellectual property specialists and has helped him string together an impressive set of victories for his many long-term clients.

H. Michael Hartmann, with the Chicago law firm of Leydig Voit & Mayer, pointed to the work Roshan did during a deposition of a difficult expert on complex issues in the pharmaceutical area. Acting essentially on his own, Roshan located several salient references from which he constructed powerful arguments that undercut the expert’s positions.

This eventually led to a favorable resolution of the dispute for the firm’s client.

“In my 40-plus years of practice, I had rarely seen this sort of insightful initiative by an associate,” Hartmann said. “Dr. Shrestha possesses exceptional analytical skills. He is able to readily grasp issues of great technical and legal complexity and provide relevant analyses critical to the successful handling of client matters.”

Roshan has been a hard-worker and a quick study for a long time. He arrived in the United States from Nepal in 1997 on a full scholarship to attend Grinnell College in Iowa. Roshan received his B.A. in Chemistry, Phi Beta Kappa, and then went on to receive his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a position in Los Alamos National Laboratory.

During his time at Los Alamos, Roshan worked on cutting-edge technology that could power electric vehicles in the future. His work has resulted in several publications in respected peer reviewed journals and two patented inventions.

Once he entered the field of law, Roshan quickly became a sought-after associate at Leydig, Hartmann said. Even as a first and second year associate, Roshan actively managed cases and quickly became a well-rounded patent attorney, Hartmann said.

Hartmann said that Roshan played large roles in several big victories for Leydig clients. One of those victories was for an RV manufacturer in Indiana. His team made a strategic decision to file a petition for inter partes review of the asserted patents at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This proceeding, under the newly implemented America Invents Act, provides an expedited resolution of patent validity. In that matter, a favorable decision from the Patent Office led to a successful settlement of a long-standing district-court litigation, Hartmann said.

Steven Sklar with Leydig Voit & Mayer said that Roshan’s scientific expertise helped this young attorney provide his clients with the best possible results in several of the cases he took on.

“Dr. Shrestha’s strong scientific background allowed him to skillfully navigate complex technical and legal issues to assist clients,” Sklar said. “Dr. Shrestha quickly demonstrated his value to our team. As a result, my colleagues and I continually gave him more responsibility in both litigation and patent prosecution matters.”

Roshan has also shown a commitment to the IP community at large. He is a contributor to scientific and legal publications, and has been published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is the co-author of Patent Claim Construction in the Federal Court, a comprehensive guide to practitioners on claim construction issues.

Roshan is also a board member and former secretary of Apna Ghar Inc., a non-profit organization that serves the victims of domestic abuse.