Meet our latest COMP2025 speaker Gina Cornelio and Christopher Ainscough
We’re excited to announce that Gina Cornelio, Partner and Patent Attorney, and Chris Ainscough, Associate Attorney, of Dorsey & Whitney LLP will be joining us at COMP2025 as featured speakers in a can’t-miss session for manufacturers and innovators alike.
In today’s ultra-competitive manufacturing landscape, protecting your innovations is just as important as creating them. From patented products to trade secrets, intellectual property (IP) plays a crucial role in maintaining your competitive edge.
Whether you’re launching new products, refining proprietary processes, or thinking about your R&D roadmap, this session will give you the practical knowledge you need to protect your most valuable assets.
Topic | Intellectual Property 101 for Manufacturing
This session will break down the essential building blocks of intellectual property protection for manufacturers, including:
- Foundational knowledge every manufacturer should know about IP protection
- Clear explanations of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets
- The risks of not protecting your IP—and how to avoid them
- Knowing the key stages in your business when legal input on IP is critical
IP isn’t just legal jargon, it’s a core business strategy. Join legal experts, Gina and Chris to learn how to secure your innovations, avoid costly mistakes, and future-proof your ideas in a competitive, dynamic marketplace.
Don’t miss your front-row seat to one of COMP2025’s most empowering sessions with Gina and Chris of Dorsey & Whitney LLP!
About Gina
Gina teams with clients to build patent portfolios strategically, reduce infringement risk effectively, and resolve infringement claims expeditiously.
Gina is Co-Head of Dorsey’s Patent Prosecution, Portfolio Strategy & Management practice group. She counsels clients on all legal issues related to patents, including procuring patents, asserting patents to stop infringement and counterfeiting, and defending against patent infringement accusations.
Gina helps clients build strong patent portfolios by outlining filing strategies that consider U.S. and foreign rights, taking into account various types of protection options, such as utility and design rights, leading invention harvesting sessions, and considering creative solutions for IP protection. As a former Patent Examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Gina uses her inside knowledge to help clients effectively compress the prosecution process and reduce costs.
Gina’s practice involves a broad range of technologies including all types of consumer product devices, electrical circuits, mechanical devices, semiconductor devices, computer graphics, software applications, and electrical devices such as image sensors, haptic feedback devices, data transmission structures, displays, and batteries. With a general engineering undergraduate degree with a specialty in electrical engineering from Colorado School of Mines, Gina understands the technical aspects of each component of a system, from the gearing and linkage, to the operating system, graphical user interface, and processing elements running the system. Full bio.
About Chris
Chris works with clients to maximize the value of their intellectual property through strategic development, assertion, and defense of patent rights. He has a passion for helping clients differentiate themselves in the marketplace of ideas and products. No client is too big or too small. Chris counsels clients from single inventors with an idea, to global Fortune 500 companies with broad patent portfolios. Chris takes a pragmatic approach, tailoring the patent strategy to the larger business needs.
As an intellectual property attorney in Dorsey’s Denver office, Chris uses his considerable experience as a former vice president of product development and in house intellectual property counsel, and chief engineer at multiple high technology startups, and within a national laboratory to help clients build value through smart development and defense of intellectual property rights.
Patent law is a two-sided coin: prosecution – developing patent rights, and litigation – asserting or defending against assertions of those rights.
On the prosecution side of the coin Chris drafts and prosecutes patent applications, performs patent due diligence, portfolio evaluation, whitespace evaluation, assists clients in business decisions related to third-party patents and products, opinions on non-infringement and patentability.
On the litigation side, Chris has helped – as part of a litigation team – successfully defend clients’ patent rights in post grant proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Chris has helped clients defend against infringement allegations and assert clients’ rights against infringers.
Chris’s areas of technical expertise include advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, life-saving medical devices, augmented reality, amusement park technology, cleantech such as hydrogen and fuel cells, consumer products, energy systems, software, and other industrial applications.
Chris is committed to pro bono legal work and has represented clients in patent work, appeals against the Department of Veterans Affairs, and is a repeat volunteer to help ensure free and fair elections remain a centerpiece of the American system of government. Full bio.
