Mary C. Bonnema

Mary is an experienced and highly accomplished intellectual property (IP) attorney with more than two decades’ experience advising companies and institutions in such industries as consumer products, food and beverage, agriculture, health and higher education on all aspects of IP – including licensing, strategy, portfolio management and due diligence in business transactions – with a particular focus on trademarks and branding. She has extensive experience in risk assessment, protection and enforcement involving trademarks, trade dress, trade secrets, copyrights and domain names, and she works closely with trusted, specialized IP counsel around the world to ensure clients’ creative assets are protected globally.

Mary’s professional backstory includes roles, interspersed with her more “traditional” legal practice, as both vice president for a Fortune 500 company and president of a law firm. This valuable C-Suite experience allows Mary to remain astutely tuned in at all times not only to the needs of in-house counsel but to the role of IP as a corporate asset that factors into broader corporate strategy. “When I was growing up, my parents had a saying,” she explained. “’Only the mediocre are always at their best.’ I never want to stop being open and curious, taking on new challenges and becoming better professionally.”

Mary particularly enjoys being pulled into a project when it is still on the ground floor, when she can have the greatest impact in shaping – and protecting – its trajectory. She also enjoys working with a client’s marketing professionals. “I have seen too many creative businesspeople without proper guidance fall in love with a concept or approach and get really invested in it — before they truly know that it’s theirs from a rights perspective. And then they are disappointed. I love giving them the tools and information they need to be impervious, as they innovate."