Overview

Grace Kim maintains a broad practice, helping new and emerging companies as well as global brands obtain patents and build and leverage their patent portfolios.

Grace helps clients secure strong patents for wide-ranging inventions, including medical devices, energy, and chemical innovations, as well as electrical and computer technologies, including consumer electronics. She has a particular interest in the life sciences, and her extensive post-grant practice includes representing many life science clients in inter partes reviews and other post-grant proceedings. Additionally, Grace conducts patent clearance investigations, patentability analysis, and due diligence investigations, and her patent work spans both utility and design patents.

With a deep-seated personal commitment to climate innovation technology and its critical role in building a more sustainable future, Grace has extensive experience in developing intellectual property protection for her clients’ innovations in this space, from rechargeable batteries and alternative energy sources to sustainable alternatives for consumer products.

Grace builds trusting relationships with clients, working with them in managing their patent portfolios and leveraging them to their full advantage. In advising clients, she crafts cost-effective strategies tailored to maximize the value of each invention, manage risk, and position the client for success. Clients know they can rely on her knowledge and experience to guide them in the right direction to accomplish their goals.

Before becoming a lawyer, Grace earned degrees in chemical and mechanical engineering. She had a successful career as an R&D engineering manager for Boston Scientific, where she gained firsthand experience in research and product development, clinical trials, FDA approvals, and the many other challenges, constraints, and pressures involved in protecting innovations and bringing products to market. With this skill set, she advises clients on their innovations from technical, legal, and business standpoints, taking them from ideation through patent prosecution, research, development, clinical trials stages, and bringing their products to market.

Grace is actively engaged in a number of pro bono representations. These include securing behavioral modification software patents for a teacher striving to help struggling inner-city students succeed in school and helping at-risk people flee Afghanistan, obtain humanitarian parole and visas, and find safety in the United States.

When she’s not working, Grace loves to go camping with her husband and two young sons near Lake Superior. It's an opportunity to relax, appreciate nature, and see the world through her children's eyes.

Professional associations

Minnesota Asian Pacific American Bar Association 

  • Treasurer (2019-2021)  
  • Vice President of Public Relations (2018) 
  • PTAB Bar Association, Chair, Committee on Appeals to the PTAB (2023-Present)

    Pro bono activities

  • International Legal Foundation (ILF) - Volunteer lawyer helping refugees in at-risk countries secure visas and find safety in the U.S.