Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

When a patent attorney cuts his teeth as an electrical engineer, helps a startup raise $150 million, and learns university tech transfer from the inside, you are likely to want him on your legal team.

For Mathew ‘Mat’ Grell, one of the founding partners of Grell & Watson, this has certainly been the case.

Since 2008, he has served more than 700 clients seeking protection for their intellectual property. His client list runs the gamut – from Fortune 500 companies to independent inventors and machinists.

Unlike many patent attorneys who wander into the practice, Grell sat out to do so from the first moment he stepped into law school.

“My mother was an inventor. And I became an electrical engineer. I didn’t even know patent law could be a legal specialty,” Grell said.

After discovering the field, he began researching and was ultimately accepted into the law school at Michigan State. That was his first exposure to the tech-transfer process from a university laboratory to a commercialized product.

Grell served as a licensing officer at the Michigan State University Office of Intellectual Property, where he managed technology portfolios and marketed inventions for licensing. He later advanced to senior licensing officer and patent attorney at the University of California system’s Office of Technology Transfer, overseeing a large portfolio of inventions across engineering and physical sciences, negotiating licenses, and handling patent matters for the university system’s Department of Energy (DOE) labs.

“I licensed a patent portfolio to a startup called Movaz Networks in Atlanta, and then I became their vice president and general counsel,” he shared. “Together, we raised $150 million, and we built fancy optical switching equipment that was later sold to a German company.”

In the back of Grell’s mind, he yearned to have his own firm. And, in 2008, he took the bold leap.

“The first year was really rough,” he recalled.

2008? No kidding.

Thankfully, Grell managed to muscle through the economic downturn. Where many industries took a big hit, the innovation ecosystem sprang out promising companies during that time period. With Grell’s background, he was able to stick out from the crowd.

“I’ve worked at a startup. We’ve raised significant amounts of money. I’ve worked at a university, figuring out what technologies are best to kind of move out into the startup space. I’ve helped build teams of people who can commercialize the product. There aren’t many attorneys who have had all of those roles,” he said.

A history of making clients happy

“One thing that is really good about patent law is that my clients are always happy. They think they’re about to win the lottery with their inventions,” he said.

One of those long-term clients is actually the driving force behind Grell’s presence in Eastern Tennessee. Grell met Leslie ‘Jerry Nims’, the Founder of TreisD Corp., about 15 years ago, and has facilitated the issuing of about a dozen patents in that time frame.

“I’ve worked with Mat for several years as a world-class patent attorney,” Nims said. “Mat’s experience in securing the most federal funding for research and patent development at an academic institution at Cal Berkley, along with his work at Michigan State and in the private sector, makes him an invaluable asset as an extension of the TreisD research and development team. We are excited to bring his expertise more formally to our headquarters at UT Research Park for our company and beyond, as we believe this area will become a national innovation center.”

TreisD relocated to Knoxville to bring its corporate headquarters to the UT Research Park at Cherokee Farms and manufacturing operations to Mascot. Since then, the company has developed a great working relationship with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Grell has opened a satellite office in Knoxville, which will be housed inside the TreisD headquarters in the Innovation South building.

Tips for patents

An interview with a top-tier patent-attorney is not complete without some tips for inventors, researchers, and founders.

Most importantly, Grell recommends that inventors have some foresight for where they think the product will evolve to: think product-market fit, new verticals, and how it could change over time.

“The better the protections around the foresight of the invention, the better your valuation, and the easier it is going to be to generate and raise money,” he added.

Learn more about Grell & Watson.

---