What do OrthoBolt, Noriscope, CathSecure, AdhesioNix, and T-Scope have in common? They’re all award-winning medical innovations designed by Utah teams in the annual Bench to Bedside (B2B) program—part of Utah Law’s experiential education—and Utah Law students have a unique role in helping these teams protect their inventions.
Since 2015, students studying patent law have been involved as fellows in the seven-month Bench to Bedside competition, sponsored by the University of Utah Center for Medical Innovation (CMI), helping B2B teams draft provisional patent applications with a faculty member’s supervision.
“Students participate in this program from all different schools and disciplines, but the law student’s participation is unique in that we are service providers. The fellow can step out of the stressful day-to-day life as a student and engage from a different perspective,” says Dan Thomas (JD ’20), a patent lawyer at Clayton Howarth & Cannon.
Helping law students and aspiring inventors to understand the patent application process
Originally a bioengineering graduate student at the University of Utah, Thomas recalls taking a class from Dr. John Langell, who started the Bench to Bedside program, that taught him the importance of intellectual property law.
“Without IP protection, an inventor has an awesome idea and hides it so nobody can find it and steal it from them—but with legal protection, they move forward and bring it out so everybody can use it and benefit from it. I changed course and came to law school and was a B2B fellow,” he says. “One of the things I found very valuable about participating in the Bench to Bedside program as a student was being able to recenter my goals and think about why I was there.”
Thomas now coaches the current B2B fellows as they work with different teams. They begin by explaining what intellectual property and patents are and how putting together a provisional patent application and filing before the competition will protect the team and their idea.
“Part of the conversation is usually geared towards developing the idea enough that when they put it into writing, the team can actually benefit from the filing. They’ll typically come back with a related patent they found through a patent search, which can be a good reference,” Thomas explains. “The fellows provide general templates and walk them through the drafting process, and the team puts together a first draft.”
Sam Noel, a patent attorney at Lowenstein Sandler who also coaches B2B fellows, adds that a large part of the process is helping teams understand the types of inventions that can be patented.
“Sometimes teams take one existing thing and another existing thing and put them together like anyone would. The fellows have to explain that it isn’t quite patentable and coach them to keep working on it,” he says. “One of the beautiful things about this program is that it’s geared toward walking groups through the innovating and prototyping process so that they can come up with great inventions.”
The teams and fellows meet several times, with the fellows providing feedback and suggested edits. Thomas and Noel provide needed oversight to ensure the students don’t miss anything important.
“We are not practicing law in this role. Everything we do is in the teaching and recommendation context,” Thomas says. “The fellows offer feedback and edits on the B2B team’s patent application drafting and guide teams all the way through to patent filing, which is something even a lot of registered patent attorneys don’t do—the support staff does it for you. You get more out of this program than you do post-graduation because you never see some of these steps.”
Fostering excitement for patent law students
Noel points out that the Bench to Bedside competition builds engagement for both law fellows and the teams.
“There’s a level of commitment and excitement that you don’t necessarily see with your clients as a junior patent attorney,” he says. “Most B2B law fellows are completing the IP law certificate and have some interest in and knowledge of patent law, so the program supplements their existing interest. All of the law fellows who’ve graduated since Dan and I started coaching are currently practicing patent attorneys.”
One of those former fellows is Victoria Tomoko Carrington (JD ’23), a registered patent attorney at Maschoff Brennan. Carrington became a B2B law fellow during her final year of law school and will be judging the 2025 competition night. She says being part of the Bench to Bedside program was a hands-on way to learn more about helping inventors protect their ideas using intellectual property law.
“Law school is great for teaching you how to read and analyze court cases, but it was B2B that gave me the opportunity to actually put into practice what I knew from my casebooks,” Carrington says. “Conducting invention disclosure meetings, preparing provisional patent applications, and even helping a team navigate registering a trademark—all of those are invaluable experiences B2B gave me.”
After working both his 2L and 3L years as a fellow, Jordan Cobabe (JD ’23) now supports the B2B program as a supervising attorney in addition to his full-time work at Lowenstein Sandler.
“Serving as a law fellow for the Bench to Bedside competition allowed me to engage with passionate inventors and learn about their brand-new medical innovations. With the responsibility of helping teams prepare provisional patent applications, I gained valuable hands-on experience in drafting patents and was able to hone my writing skills,” he says. “Overall, the B2B law fellow program was an incredible opportunity that I highly recommend to any aspiring patent prosecutor.”
Offering current students real-life patent law experience
2L Hannah Bruce is currently a B2B fellow and says she has enjoyed being part of the program over the past several months.
“Participating in the Bench to Bedside competition has been an incredible opportunity to collaborate with a diverse, driven group of students tackling complex healthcare challenges,” she says. “As a student learning about patent law, I’ve loved seeing innovative ideas take shape and exploring the legal and intellectual property challenges of bringing them to life.”
For Braden Brown, a 2L who is also serving as a B2B fellow, meeting with students and hearing about their ideas is most rewarding.
“It’s been fun to switch between talking with undergraduate students and patent attorneys about patent law. The experience has given me a chance to practice explaining patent law concepts in an understandable way and to think about what a person really needs to know to file a patent application,” he says. “Because the competition is medically focused, each team is working on something that has the potential to help improve patients’ lives—which makes it really easy to want to help the teams and learn more about their projects.”
Seeing Bench to Bedside winners succeed after the competition
While the medical devices students create don’t always make it to the market, Noel recalls helping 2020 Bench to Bedside winner Stella Markova launch Bedvee, an electric bed wedge, through the ProBoPat patent pro bono program.
“Stella did a provisional patent application through Bench to Bedside and then came to Lowenstein Sandler for us to help with her nonprovisional patent. She went through different rounds of funding to launch her company,” he says. “A successful team project is not short-term in nature but something that continues onward. One of the early standout projects, Xenocor, took a simple iPhone camera and reconfigured it so it was essentially a disposable laparoscope. It could be used in third-world countries and other areas where they didn’t have the funding or space for giant machines. It’s probably 10 years in the making and a great example of something that came from Bench to Bedside.”
Thomas also finds it rewarding to see students end the competition by filing a provisional patent application.
“If you were to go to a law firm for a provisional patent, it would cost so much money. These student teams wouldn’t usually have those types of resources,” he explains. “They start out with that protection and receive good coaching and help.”
Additionally, he likes seeing B2B law fellows who are new to patent law dealing with inventors and learning client management.
“This is a real way for them to jump in the fire and get that experience of working with actual clients and patent applications,” Thomas says. “During your first years as a patent associate at a law firm, sometimes it’s the partners interfacing with the clients. But here, the students are able work on those skills and coach clients directly. It’s a change of pace and a way to relax, and it stands out from other law school experiences.”
Watching the Bench to Bedside program grow
Since B2B started in a little room in the basement of the medical library more than a decade ago, it has grown to include hundreds of people throughout the university and the state, says Professor Jorge Contreras, who directs Utah Law’s IP and technology law program.
“Bench to Bedside is a great program because it engages the College of Law with other units on campus in a really meaningful way. We’re off in the corner of campus, and a lot of faculty and students don’t necessarily interact with anyone outside the law school,” he says. “This is a great opportunity for the law school to get visibility in other units on campus and within the business community, and it also helps to raise the law school and the IP program’s profile. The competition itself, in Utah’s capitol rotunda, is also a nice way to bring the community together.”
Bench to Bedside teams formally present their projects each April, where a panel of judges evaluate and score the products and award top teams milestone funding. For more information, visit the Bench to Bedside website.