Barber, Bretton

Dr. Andrej Barbic is a senior associate in the firm's Intellectual Property Department. He joined the firm in 2005 as a technology specialist.

Practice

Dr. Barbic's practice focuses on US and foreign patent prosecution and portfolio development, inter partes reexaminations, patent litigation, legal opinions, due diligence analyses and contested matters at the European Patent Office.

Dr. Barbic has counseled clients on vulnerability of blockbuster drugs to challenges by the generic pharmaceutical industry, listability of patents in the FDA Orange Book, pre-ANDA litigation analyses, as well as various aspects of ANDA litigation. He has prosecuted patents and developed patent portfolios in various fields, including small molecules, pharmaceutical formulations, rational drug design, combinatorial chemistry, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, proteomics, protein engineering and biotechnology.

As a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, Dr. Barbic developed a novel assay for rapid analysis of protein-DNA interactions and gained experience in bioinformatics. From 1995 to 2001, Dr. Barbic served as graduate researcher and teaching fellow at Yale University, where he determined a high-resolution structure and curvature of an intrinsically bent DNA molecule using heteronuclear Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer techniques. Dr. Barbic also advanced the field of analysis of nucleic acid structural parameters and presented research results at several international conferences.

Prior to his graduate work, Dr. Barbic researched pharmaceutical formulations for a generic pharmaceutical company and synthesized novel substrates for studies of enzymes in organic solvents. In 1991, Dr. Barbic participated in the XXIII International Chemistry Olympiad in Poland on the first team ever to represent Slovenia at this competition.

Dr. Barbic is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and the Boston Patent Law Association.

Publications

• Shann Kerner, Ph.D., Andrej Barbic, Ph.D., Kyle Robertson, "Examples Requirements for Patentability of Inventions in US and Foreign Jurisdictions," Bloomberg Intellectual Property Law Reports, Vol. 3, No. 37 (September 7, 2009).
• Barbic, A., D.P. Zimmer, and D.M. Crothers. "Structural Origins of Adenine-tract Bending." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100 (2003): 2369-73.
• Barbic, A., and D.M. Crothers. "Comparison of Analyses of DNA Curvature." J. Biomol. Struct. Dyn. 21 (2003): 89-97.