Maddie Vishwanathan

Maddie Vishwanathan is intellectual property counsel at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated in Boston, Massachusetts, where she advises on a range of patent-related matters supporting pharmaceutical innovation.

She previously served as senior manager, patent counsel at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was an associate in the biotechnology and chemical group at Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox in Washington, DC. 

Earlier in her career, she held roles as a technical associate at Buckman Laboratories International in Memphis, Tennessee, and as an Intellectual Property specialist at Harris Shelton Hanover Walsh. She also worked as an executive in the Intellectual Property Cell at Panacea Biotec  in Mumbai, India.

Vishwanathan serves as an adjunct professor of patent law in the Summer IP Foundations programme at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. She is an active speaker and panellist on intellectual property issues, including patent subject matter eligibility under Section 101, AI-assisted and AI-generated inventions, and inventorship issues. 

Vishwanathan currently serves as chair of the patent division of the American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), where she leads a broad group of practitioners and stakeholders across multiple committees and initiatives. Her prior leadership roles within ABA-IPL include chair of the Patent System Planning Committee, Co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Task Force, member of the Task Force on Patent Durability and Reliability, and member of the Section Nominating Committee.

She has led the development of patent policy proposals adopted as official ABA policy and has contributed to submissions and comments to the US Patent and Trademark Office on issues including Patent Trial and Appeal Board practice, diversity in the patent bar, and patent robustness and reliability.

In 2023 and 2024, she received the ABA-IPL Section Leadership Award for outstanding service.