John E. Pritchard, PhD

Senior Patent Agent

LICENSURES & BAR ADMISSIONS:

• USPTO Patent Bar, 2012
  Registration No. 63,132

John E. Pritchard, PhD is a Senior Patent Attorney with Weatherly IP Solutions, LLC.

John served as the patent agent for Monsanto’s corn and canola breeding division for 11 years, drafting and prosecuting patent applications for modern industrial plant breeding innovations, including marker-assisted selection, genome/gene editing, doubled-haploids, transformation, transgenics, and agronomic practices. He was also responsible for protecting innovations outside of the customary plant breeding arena, including digital agriculture, remote sensing and prescription farming, agricultural engineering and farming robotics, computer algorithms, and machine learning inventions.

In 2019, John joined Benson Hill to become the IP Director responsible for all aspects of the company’s growing IP portfolio. There, he developed an IP philosophy and pipeline focused on serving the business, instituting active and robust competitor intelligence and invention disclosure systems and directing collaboration between scientists, engineers, and attorneys with limited resources to efficiently protect the company’s most valuable technological investments with patents, plant breeder’s rights, trade secrets, and trademarks.