Ian Johnson

Ian works with business leaders to tackle the legal challenges that arise in founding, funding, and growing their companies. He leverages his broad background and experience across technology, business, and law to understand client needs and provide holistic solutions.

Intellectual Property

Ian understands the importance of protecting his client’s valuable assets and helps achieve this through securing patents, trademarks, and copyright registrations where appropriate, as well as developing best practices to protect trade secrets and proprietary knowledge. He works with clients to navigate the competitive landscape by preparing non-infringement and freedom to operate opinions.

Ian advises clients in a variety of industries on management, growth, commercialization, and protection of their intellectual property assets. Clients of all sizes rely on Ian to help them develop a cohesive intellectual property strategy that serves their unique business objectives and fits within their business models. Ian assists from negotiation to closing on a variety of intellectual property transactions including acquisitions, sales, and licenses. Ian also lends his intellectual property expertise to other Losey attorneys to assist in resolving intellectual property disputes and litigation.

Representative Experience:

Prepare and prosecute patents in fields including autonomous vehicles, mobile device accessories, vehicle equipment, network communications, watercraft, payment systems, chemical catalysts, and medical diagnostic devices.
Advise clients on selection of trademarks, perform clearance searches, prepare and prosecute trademark registrations, and represent client interests before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
Manage global trademark portfolios for clients including an international luxury travel brand, a health non-profit, a compliance software-as-a-service provider, and a YCombinator graduate community-focused startup.
Advised client on acquisition of international family of patents related to production of plastics containing hemp components.
Counsel to software developer regarding inbound and outbound software licensing agreements.

Business and Transactional

Ian advises businesses through all stages of the business lifecycle. He assists clients with entity selection, business structuring, foundational documents, ongoing governance, and relations between ownership, management, and employees. Ian leads clients through financing transactions including common and preferred equity issuances, private placements, and debt financing. Ian also has experience representing clients in a variety of business transactions including mergers and acquisitions on both the buyer and seller sides.

As a former entrepreneur, Ian understands the balance of relationships that make a successful business run and works with clients to provide appropriate legal documents to reflect various stakeholder interests. In addition to counseling clients on internal matters, Ian advises on a wide variety of commercial agreements between clients and third parties. He also assists Losey’s litigation team in complex corporate and commercial disputes with his subject matter expertise.

Representative Experience:

Counsel to multiple venture capital and private equity funds including fund formation and Regulation D private placements.
Sell-side representation of environmental and pharmaceutical testing businesses in acquisition by international conglomerate for $20 million.
Sell-side representation of environmental testing business in acquisition for $7 million.
Sell-side representation of digital marketing agency in acquisition by nationwide marketing firm for $5.5 million.
Buy-side representation of computer vision software company in stock-for-stock strategic acquisition of hardware manufacturer.
Buy-side representation on $2.3 million SBA-funded acquisition of assets of regional roofing company and associated real estate.
Counsel to watercraft manufacturer in connection with $2 million private equity investment.
Counsel to angel investors and companies in connection with private company investments.
Designed and implemented incentive compensation plans including stock option, profits interest, and phantom equity plans to enable clients to reward key service providers.

Education and Professional Background

Ian earned his JD magna cum laude from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he was a member of the Journal of Technology Law and Policy, president of the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Association, and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. While there, he received CALI awards for the highest course grade in Business Enterprises, Patent Law, Evidence, and Florida Constitutional Law. During law school, Ian worked for a boutique California-based law firm. Prior to law school, Ian founded and led several startups focused on social influence and crowdfunding. Ian holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a concentration in Acoustic Engineering from Purdue University.

Ian is admitted to practice in the State of Florida, the United States District Courts for the Northern and Middle District of Florida, and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.