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Clinton South
Associate
Ballard Spahr LLP
Clinton South is an associate in the Intellectual Property Department of Ballard Spahr and member of the Chemical and Pharmaceutical practice teams in Ballard Spahr’s Patents Group. Clint’s practice focuses on drafting and prosecuting domestic and foreign patent applications, opinion work, client counseling, intellectual property litigation, and proceedings at the USPTO—including post-grant and inter partes review proceedings.
Clint has extensive experience with global patent portfolio management, patent procurement, strategy, and due diligence. Clint represents leading specialty chemical, polymer, and materials manufacturers in procurement matters in the United States and worldwide, routinely assisting with patent prosecution in Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East. In addition to Utility Patent work, Clint often prepares and prosecutes Design Patent Applications.
Clint’s technical experience is diverse and includes work involving pharmaceuticals, cannabinoids and related formulations, water filtration and desalination, electric vehicle (EV) technology including EV batteries and supporting materials such as cathode and anode materials, polymers, adhesives, coatings, plastics, rubbers, inorganic fillers, conductive and non-conductive materials, reactors, and renewable and green chemical manufacturing.
Clint is often asked to assist with protracted prosecution in the United States when it reaches the appeal stage, focusing on crafting appellate-style arguments and brief drafting.
Prior to joining Ballard Spahr, Clint served as a law clerk in federal courts at the trial and appellate levels. As a law clerk in the Eastern District of Texas, Clint worked on numerous trials and other proceedings, including more than 40 claim construction (or Markman) hearings. At the Federal Circuit, Clint assisted with appeals in patent and other cases originating from federal district courts and administrative tribunals.
Clint’s graduate work focused on organic and polymer chemistry, including small-molecule synthesis and materials science.
Recent Articles by Clinton South
With cannabis now legal in some form across more than 30 states, the cannabis industry is on the rise and expected to achieve a market size of more than $60 billion by the end of 2025. As with any new and growing industry, intellectual property protection will be central to innovation and investment. Several unique challenges emerge at the intersection of cannabis and intellectual property law, the first of which is obtaining protection for a cannabis-related business or invention. Two characteristics of cannabis make intellectual property protection challenging—its status as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act and the fact that many cannabis species are naturally-occurring. Applications for cannabis trademarks, for instance, have encountered resistance at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) due to cannabis’s illegal status under federal law. Unlike trademarks, however, a patent does not require an applicant to show that the product is lawfully used in interstate commerce. Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others from the invention, and there is nothing unlawful about obtaining such a right.
