Illinois Marijuana Laws and Regulations

Brad Graveline is an Equity Partner in the Intellectual Property and Litigation Practice Groups in Sheppard Mullin’s Chicago office. His practice focuses on all areas of Life Sciences, including cannabis, pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements and medical devices. He has particular expertise in Life Sciences patent litigation, and he also advises clients on a variety of intellectual property matters, including with regard to patents, trademarks and trade secrets.

Brad is a member of Sheppard Mullin’s Cannabis Team, which has been recognized as a “Cannabis Practice Group of the Year” by Law360. He advises clients in the cannabis space in connection with the procurement and management of intellectual property, technology transactions and regulatory matters.

Brad also is highly experienced in Hatch-Waxman litigation and has represented pharmaceutical companies in more than 30 Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) cases. He frequently represents highly visible clients in high-stakes ANDA cases and has served as lead trial and appeal counsel in numerous cases. Many of Brad’s ANDA cases have involved widely known and blockbuster drugs, including Prozac® (which Fortune Magazine referred to as “The Mother of All Patent Challenges”), Yaz®, Yasmin®, Uloric®, Gralise®, Avodart®, Evista®, Entocort®, Clarinex® and Mircette®.

Brad also manages a trademark prosecution and management team that handles the global protection and enforcement of trademark portfolios, and he counsels clients in the strategy and procurement of trademark rights.

In addition to IP litigation, Brad serves as trial counsel on a wide array of other commercial cases in the areas of trade secrets, professional responsibility, breach of contract, unfair competition, product liability, securities, antitrust and class action defense. Brad is lead editor of the book, Illinois Contract Litigation (LexisNexis).

Kathryn Ryan Douglas is an associate in Sheppard Mullin’s Business Trials Practice Group in the Chicago office. She is a member of the firm’s Privacy and Cybersecurity team and a member of the Transportation, Trade Secrets, and Cannabis Industry Teams. Kathryn is a cum laude graduate of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where she was a member of the Journal of International Law and Business and a student attorney in Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions.

Kathryn’s litigation practice includes work on a variety of high profile cases, including in the areas of shareholder and investor disputes, patent infringement, data breaches, the Illinois Biometric Data Privacy Act, and theft of trade secrets. She was a member of the Sheppard Mullin team that obtained one of the largest (if not the largest) patent infringement damages awards against the United States of America.

Before joining Sheppard Mullin, Kathryn worked in the trucking and logistics industries.

Rebecca L. Mackin focuses her practice on patent litigation, data privacy, cyber security, trademarks and intellectual property licensing in a variety of fields, including security screening systems, insurance, computer hardware and software, data storage, and pharmaceuticals.

Rebecca has 20 years of business and technology experience, in both the insurance and data privacy fields. As a result, Rebecca has a practical, results-oriented approach to her cases. Previously, Rebecca was the Senior Privacy Counsel at Aon, where she was responsible for advising and counseling businesses on a variety of privacy law issues, including, but not limited to, TCPA, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, CAN-SPAM, and helping them to devise compliant programs for their business needs. Since she has been at Sheppard Mullin, Rebecca has gained substantial experience managing large-scale, high-stakes patent litigations. She has in-court trial experience as well as experience preparing witnesses for trial and depositions, managing discovery and handling complex motion practice.