Ashley’s practice includes many aspects of intellectual property prosecution and counseling, with an emphasis in patent-related matters. She practices across a wide variety of technologies and counsels clients on the management of patent portfolios. Ashley manages and mentors junior attorneys in drafting and prosecuting patents.
In addition to patent prosecution and counseling, Ashley has extensive experience preparing invalidity and infringement opinions, patentability opinions, clearance opinions, and conducting due diligence assessments of patent portfolios. Ashley is also skilled at leading inventor groups in patent harvesting sessions due to her experience in internal harvesting of potential patent submissions.
Ashley’s career began at Shook directly after law school, where she collaborated with clients to align patent portfolio initiatives with strategic business objectives. Her work initially focused on patent preparation and prosecution. Her experience in various technology areas includes software technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, digital health solutions, and 5G core network architecture.
Ashley would transition to an in-house senior patent counsel opportunity at Oracle (previously Cerner Corporation) and gained invaluable insight into the client perspective of intellectual property management. She worked with business units to ensure alignment of their business objectives with the organization’s IP strategy to protect competitive advantages. Moreover, she worked closely with developmental teams to identify, harvest, prioritize and protect organizational patent assets. Ashley oversaw various patent infringement analyses and worked closely with outside counsel to manage the preparation and prosecution of patent assets. Her in-house responsibilities also included managing online takedown requests and monitoring/updating electronic patent marking. Notably, she gained invaluable insights into the practical monetization of patent assets for a corporate entity. With her return to Shook, Ashley leverages this in-house experience in her practice to better meet her clients’ needs.
Ashley is active in pro bono activities at Shook as well. Over the years, she has been involved in several programs that assist individuals in obtaining trademark registrations for their small businesses and an education initiative that assists individuals with obtaining and managing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and 504(c) plans for students.