Elizabeth D. Ferrill Esq.

Finnegan

Elizabeth Ferrill is a partner at Finnegan in Washington DC who focuses her practice on all aspects of design patents, including prosecution, counseling, post-grant, and litigation. She counsels clients who hold design patents as well as those accused of infringement. She has experience with design patents related to consumer and industrial products, medical devices, transportation and construction vehicles, and graphical user interfaces and icons. She has prosecuted families of design patents before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), directed prosecution in foreign countries, and argued appeals before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). She has a special interest in strategic counseling related to acquiring for worldwide protection for designs. She also litigates design patent matters at the U.S. district court level that include trade dress claims. In addition, she has appeared before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Elizabeth also has extensive experience in utility patent litigation in the areas of software- and hardware-related technologies. 

Before beginning her legal career, Elizabeth graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and served five years on active duty as a communications officer. She was stationed at Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C., coordinating and overseeing testing of joint intelligence software systems, and at Thule Air Base, Greenland, where she served as the flight commander in charge of base communications. Elizabeth also served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Liam O’Grady at the U.S. District Court for the E.D. of Virginia, Alexandria Division. 

She is an Editor-in-Chief of the AIPLA/Bloomberg Law treatise Comparative Global Design Law.