Zareefa B. Flener
Founder & Managing Partner
Flener IP & Business Law
Zareefa is the managing partner at Flener IP & Business Law, a Women-Owned business, and has extensive experience managing international and domestic patent and trademark portfolios in a wide range of areas. She has also been highly successful in obtaining company goals in M&A deals including preparing, revising and negotiating intellectual property related agreements. Zareefa regularly provides thorough and effective assistance to companies in their due diligence efforts.
She has a Bachelor of Science in biology and a double major in Psychology, and she received her Master of Science degree from Loyola University of Chicago, With Distinction, an accolade which had never before been awarded to a graduate student.
She is well regarded by her clients and her peers, worldwide, for her attention to, and assistance with, international patent portfolios ranging from the electrical, to the mechanical, to the pharma, to the biotech, to the design arts, just to mention a few. She has most recently been recognized in Managing Intellectual Property magazine as an IP Star in Illinois and in the United States as a whole, and one of the Top 250 Women in IP.
She was in the laboratory doing hands on research also for almost ten years before becoming a patent (intellectual property) attorney. Her research and scientific experience is in two particularly explosive areas: HIV transmission and pathology, and mapping of the human genome. Her masters project, from Loyola University of Chicago, involved mapping of the distal short arm of human chromosome 21, from the rDNA to the telomere, and she graduated with High Distinction. She is well published in the field of HIV pathology in such journals as the American Journal of Pathology, Clinical Immunology, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Prior to founding Flener IP & Business Law, Zareefa practiced at a prestigious international intellectual property firm for almost ten years. She was voted in as the first female partner in one of the offices. Her dedication and responsiveness to her clients sets her apart from others and just one of the reasons for her honorable recognition and accolades from the international community.
Zareefa continues to work with a broad range of technology not the least of which is stem cells, virology, immunology, biochemical processes, cell culture, and laboratory instrument related inventions, among others. Zareefa also prepares and prosecutes applications in technology areas of design, mechanical, biochemistry, business methods, electrical and medical devices. Zareefa has had the fortune of being involved in the fast growing and changing cannabis industry, both on the patent and the trademark side, and has assisted clients in achieving prominence and value in an increasingly crowded field.