IAM Strategy 300 Winners
What Separates an IP Attorney at SLW From a Patent Attorney
Four SLW attorneys were named to the IAM Strategy 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists 2026. What the distinction measures says something about how patent work is changing.
Every company with an R&D budget eventually runs into a question that goes beyond any single application: what should this portfolio be doing for the business five years from now?
Getting a patent allowed is the foundation. Building a portfolio that works is the larger project, and it is full of decisions: which inventions to protect first, how broadly to claim them, and where to file and in what sequence as the product finds its markets. A patent family has to be shaped so that it reads as a durable asset to an acquirer or an investor rather than a stack of unrelated certificates. The product your engineers are three months from shipping needs clear room to run, and someone has to secure that room before it ships. If you have a view of where a competitor is heading, you can file now and already be there when they arrive.
Those are strategy questions. Answering them well takes everything a first-rate prosecutor knows about claim drafting and examiner practice, plus a clear view of the business the patents are meant to serve. That combination is the whole premise of the IAM Strategy 300 and it is why the list is worth paying attention to.
What the IAM Strategy 300 Measures
IAM describes the guide as its annual listing of “trailblazing individuals in the development and implementation of world-class IP value creation programmes.” The operative phrase is value creation. IAM’s premise is that IP rights are significant enhancers of business value: they drive revenues, increase profits, optimize collaborations, secure freedom to operate, and can even serve as security in the financial markets.
What the benchmarking project looks for, in IAM’s own words, is people who “do not see issues from just one perspective; instead, they see value creation in the round.” It is that 360-degree view, combined with a demonstrable ability to deliver, that distinguishes the individuals who make the list. Since 2016, the guide has also covered in-house corporate IP professionals alongside outside advisers, a recognition that the most useful strategic instincts are often formed on the client side of the table.
Two features of the methodology are worth naming plainly. Individuals are identified through confidential online nominations together with independent research, including interviews and email correspondence, so the list reflects what the market says about someone when they are not in the room. Per IAM, it is not possible to buy a place in the guide; everyone who makes the final cut is featured at no cost. IAM is a product of Law Business Research. For the 2026 edition, four SLW attorneys were selected: the same four recognized in the 2025
The Four SLW IAM Strategy 300 Winners
Garth Vivier, Principal and Executive Team Member, San Jose
Garth has spent 28 years procuring high-value patents for both multinational corporations and startups, across AI/ML, IoT, semiconductors, computer architecture, database technology, silicon photonics and digital audio. Eighteen of those years have been in Silicon Valley, which is where the strategic dimension of his practice comes from: he builds IP strategies scaled to the budgets startups have, then keeps them aligned to business objectives as those companies grow. He was an engineer designing missile guidance systems before entering the patent profession. This is his fifth appearance on the IAM Strategy 300.
Andre Marais, Principal and Executive Team Member, San Jose
Andre’s conviction is that a patent portfolio should be a valuable, strategic asset aligned to a real business strategy, not a filing count. He has worked closely with several of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies since their earliest days, and brings that “in the trenches” perspective to portfolio strategy and growth. His practice spans strategic IP counseling and prosecution in the U.S. and abroad, validity, infringement and clearance opinions, and IP due diligence in networking, software, communications and electrical and electronic technologies. Andre has been named to the IAM Strategy 300 every year since 2016 and was recognized in the IAM Patent 1000 from 2012 through 2022.
Tyler Nasiedlak, Principal Executive Team Member, Minneapolis
Tyler spent nearly twelve years in-house in the medical device industry before joining SLW, serving as Vice President and General Counsel for Boston Scientific’s cardiac rhythm management business and as Vice President and Chief Patent Counsel for its cardiac rhythm management and cardiovascular businesses. He has sat where his clients sit: briefing executives on freedom-to-operate exposure, weighing post-grant options, and evaluating business development deals. He now advises companies and investors on portfolio strategy, FTOs and landscaping, and technology licensing and transactions across software, medical devices, autonomous vehicles, mechanical technologies, and fintech.
Aaron Wininger, Principal and Director, China IP Practice
Aaron directs SLW’s China Intellectual Property Practice, counseling both U.S. and Chinese companies on patent and trademark portfolio development, non-infringement and invalidity opinions, and cross-border enforcement, including patent enforcement through Amazon’s Patent Evaluation Express (APEX) program. His clients work in AI, networks, lasers, medical devices, semiconductors, and physics. His fluency in both markets lets clients expand and enforce their IP on both sides of the Pacific. He publishes regularly at China IP Law Update.
Why This Kind of Recognition Clusters at SLW
Four strategists on one list is not a coincidence of hiring. It is a function of how the firm is built.
There is also an honest caveat to any list like this one: a directory can name individuals, but it cannot name a bench. The four attorneys above would be the first to say that the kind of thinking IAM recognized is not scarce at SLW. It is the standard that the firm’s patent attorneys and agents work to every day, and plenty of the firm’s most valuable strategic counsel comes from people who have never appeared in a guide and are not trying to. What follows is not a description of four exceptional individuals so much as a description of the environment that produced them.
SLW has done one thing since 1993: IP procurement. Patent and trademark preparation and prosecution is not a department here, it is the entire business, and the people, processes and technology are all pointed at it. That focus produces a particular kind of attorney. When prosecution is all you do, you see the same strategic mistakes across hundreds of portfolios, and you develop a view about what works. The technical bench matters too. The firm has more than 110 patent attorneys and agents, 23 of them holding master’s degrees and 15 or more holding PhDs, and its attorneys bring over 150 years of collective in-house experience. That last number is the one that shows up most in strategy work: attorneys who have carried a corporate IP budget approach a client’s portfolio differently than attorneys who have only ever billed against one.
Scale is what turns judgment into something a company can actually use. SLW is one of the leading U.S. firms for originating patent filings, with enterprise-level portfolio management that holds premium quality at high volume, supported by more than 100 checklists governing firm operations, attorney work product reviewed by a second SLW attorney, staff proofreaders, and USPTO communications reported to clients within a week of receipt. Strategy that cannot be executed reliably at volume is just advice.
The firm also builds its own tools rather than waiting for the market to supply them. Foundation IP, the docketing platform now used worldwide, was invented at SLW. The same is true of ClaimScape®, the claim mapping tool behind the firm’s freedom-to-operate work, and the patent analytics dashboards clients use to see their own portfolios. Portfolio analytics, technology landscape reports, examiner and prosecution analytics, competitive benchmarking and budget forecasting are all in-house services. A strategist is only as good as their visibility into the landscape, and these are the instruments that provide it.
Add high attorney continuity and low turnover, and you get relationships measured in decades rather than matters. Strategic advice compounds when the person giving it has watched a portfolio develop for fifteen years.
Why SLW Attorneys are IP Specialists
The difference between a patent attorney and an IP strategist is not a difference in craft, it is a difference in scope. One question is how to get this application allowed; the other is what the portfolio it belongs to is being built to accomplish. As companies increasingly evaluate their IP as a balance sheet asset rather than a legal artifact, they are asking for both at once.
Meeting that expectation is not the work of four people. It is what the whole firm is organized to do.
Congratulations to Garth Vivier, Andre Marais, Tyler Nasiedlak and Aaron Wininger and to the colleagues across every practice whose work sits behind the recognition.
About the IAM Strategy 300
IAM Strategy 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists is an annual listing of individuals recognized for their work developing and implementing IP value creation programs. Individuals are chosen through confidential online nominations, as well as research including interviews and email. Everyone who makes the final cut is featured at no cost: a place in the guide cannot be purchased. IAM is a product of Law Business Research.
Learn more about the IAM Strategy 300 methodology.