Perkins Coie Lunch Series: 2024-2025

Vijay Kumar, Partner, Perkins Coie LLP

Vijay leverages his legal, technical, and business experience to protect his clients’ most valuable innovations.

Whether working with emerging companies or international corporations, Vijay Kumar prides himself on thoroughly understanding each client’s core business and developing a customized intellectual property (IP) strategy consistent with their short and long-term goals.

Within the energy and chemical sectors, he has worked on matters involving hydrogen production and storage, fuel cells, oxygen-enriched combustion burners, thermionic energy converters, pressure swing adsorption units, battery systems, mineral extraction and processing, underground coal gasification, carbon capture, chemical processing, biomass conversion, nuclear technologies, solar cells, metallurgical-grade coke production and handling, and other alternative energies.

Within the medical device sector, Vijay has experience with intravascular systems, neuromodulation, implantable stimulation devices, orthodontic appliances, microfluidic devices, cardiac pacing, vascular fluid therapy, and therapeutic ultrasound systems. Utilizing his background in chemical and electrical engineering, Vijay has also worked with clients in semiconductor design and fabrication, wireless speakers, software applications, and other consumer devices.

In addition to procuring patents in these sectors, Vijay regularly analyzes third-party patent portfolios regarding validity and freedom-to-operate concerns, and mines client patent portfolios to identify assets for licensing and divestment purposes. He also has experience with both investor-side and company-side patent-related due diligence, having represented venture capital firms, institutional investors, multinational corporations, and emerging companies.

Before beginning his legal career, Vijay worked in the energy sector at a global industrial gas company and held various engineering roles within operations, design, and commissioning.

Vijay has been recognized by Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch and selected as a “Washington Rising Star” in recent years.

Amy Fisher, Director of Sustainability Partnerships, Muir AI

Amy Fisher is the Director of Partnerships at Muir AI, where she leads customer and partner engagements. With Muir, corporations create scaled product-level insights to enable supply chain optimization and drive decarbonization across products and suppliers. Amy has spent her career focused on embedding sustainability into business operations, working with clients in the private and public sector around the world. Amy has a Master’s Degree in International Affairs & Economics from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and Affairs from the University of California, Davis.

Mel Clark, President & CEO, CleanTech Alliance

Mel Clark is a leader with 25 years of nonprofit experience, as well as for-profit business experience in real estate and human resources.  She has a demonstrated track record of strong fiscal stewardship and program development.  She joined the CleanTech Alliance in April 2020.

She has two adult children, one in college studying computer science, the other a theatre technician at Disneyland.

She was born in Massachusetts, raised in Kansas, spent summers on the beach in Connecticut, and attended colleges in New York and Washington.  She is a life-long learner, and loves to read, travel, cook, bake, and garden, and enjoys hiking, yoga, swimming, diving, and tolerates running (long enough to finish a marathon in 2017).