Patent Counseling & Prosecution – Agricultural Science

Cooley has served as primary IP counsel to Zymergen since its founding, helping the company to navigate IP diligence through various funding rounds and establish a robust IP estate. Zymergen, a synthetic biology and biofacturing company developing molecules used in industries including agriculture, chemicals, materials, pharmaceuticals, electronics and more, recently had a successful debut on the public markets with a NASDAQ listing in 2021.

Cooley’s IP team provides guidance on all aspects of IP matters, helping the company to protect its foundational high-throughput genomic engineering platform and various contributions to the field of synthetic biology.

Cooley has served as primary IP counsel to Nobell Foods since its founding, helping the company to protect its innovative contributions aimed at making the world’s food systems more humane and sustainable. Nobell Foods is utilizing the power of plants to reimagine the world’s food supply and produce delicious cheese from plant-derived dairy proteins. The company recently completed a $75 million Series B in 2021 to help bring its vision to the world.

Cooley handles ongoing patent counseling and prosecution work for Native Microbials, helping to build its global patent portfolio, including obtaining key US patents covering various microbial products for improving animal health and patents protecting the company’s process for identifying microbial strains. Native Microbials’ patented platform for microbial identification transforms the analysis of microbial community systems away from the ubiquitous statistically predictive approach practiced today, to a more biologically relevant and functionally descriptive approach, which is yielding industry leading insights into microbial solutions for animal health.

In addition, Cooley recently advised the company on its $46 million Series B financing round.

Cooley advised Evolutionary Genomics (EG), an agricultural biotech company engaged in crop improvement through gene identification, in all contractual and intellectual property aspects of its partnership with Dole Food Company to develop and commercialize banana plant varieties resistant to a fungus that threatens to devastate the global supply of bananas, the most grown and consumed fruit in the world.

EG discovered a gene found in wild banana varieties that are resistant to a widespread strain of Fusarium fungus which has decimated global plantations of the most common commercial banana variety, Cavendish. Under the agreement, EG will use the gene to develop Cavendish-based varieties that restore the plant's natural ability to fight the pathogen. Upon successful completion, Dole will test the resulting plants in field trials and then embark on broad commercialization under a licensing agreement with EG.

Cooley advised California-based agricultural biotech growth company Pivot Bio on its $100 million Series C funding round, co-led by repeat investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and a global investment company. Pivot Bio has raised $186 million to date and plans to use the funds to scale-up its microbial nitrogen technology that helps farmers boost crop yield and reduce reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The funding will also be used to help the company expand internationally. "The strong backing by our Series C investors enables Pivot Bio to redefine the future of fertilizer and provide the world's farmers with a new nitrogen source. Based on remarkable demand, we expect to ramp up from our large current footprint to millions of additional acres in the next growing season." said Karsten Temme, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Pivot Bio, in a news release.

Cooley advised emerging crop protection company Provivi on its $45.5 million series C-2 financing round led by Vivo Capital, with participation from returning shareholders. Provivi has developed a truly disruptive technological platform that enables the scalable production of environmentally friendly insect pheromone products. These products are able to naturally disrupt the mating cycle of insect pests and reduce the current overreliance upon non-sustainable synthetic insecticides. "The Series C-2 financing is a new milestone in the growth of our company. It builds upon a very successful year where Provivi achieved several product registrations worldwide and launched our first product commercially in Mexico," said Dr. Pedro Coelho, cofounder and CEO of Provivi.

HM.CLAUSE is a leading international company dedicated to the innovative and sustainable development of vegetable seeds. It takes vegetable breeders between eight and twelve years to develop and commercialize a new vegetable seed variety. Cooley’s professional team works closely with the world class vegetable breeders at HM.CLAUSE to ensure that the company's innovative seed solutions, which require so much time and effort to produce, enjoy robust IP protection.