Cheryl L. Meier
Partner
cmeier@chapmanspingola.com
(312) 606-8748
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Cheryl Meier has over 25 years of experience advising clients with strategic transactions where technology and intellectual property rights are deal-critical. She routinely handles research & development arrangements (through to commercialization), patent/technology and trademark licensing, long-term manufacturing, supply-chain and co-marketing arrangements, professional services and consulting agreements, and enterprise software/database acquisition and related services.
Through her role as lead IP Counsel in numerous Fortune 500 company and private equity M&A deals, Cheryl has built a fluent business vocabulary across industries including financial services, pharma/life sciences/genetics, manufacturing and distribution, big brand consumer products, performing and fine arts, hospitality & gaming, automotive technologies, material sciences, and agribusiness.
Starting with her first career at Pfizer Laboratories in the late 1980s, Cheryl has cultivated particular expertise in the healthcare space, with a focus on hospital services, pharmaceutical licensing/distribution, medical data licensing, and life sciences research transactions, including university and government-sponsored research arrangements. Cheryl takes a business-focused approach to counseling and negotiations, offering strategic, pragmatic advice to help clients get deals up and running quickly.
Before joining the Chapman Spingola team, Cheryl spent 12 years as a Partner in the Intellectual Property Transactions group of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, punctuated by a 2-year appointment as Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the University of Illinois School of Law, teaching substantive Property and Intellectual Property courses. Afterward, as Principal of her own firm, Cheryl partnered long-term with significant clients in the healthcare services, foods manufacturing, professional services, and materials sciences industries.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law; serving a 2-year, full-time appointment teaching Property Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Intellectual Property Licensing
Judicial Clerk to The Honorable Jesse E. Eschbach, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
J.D., 1996, University of Illinois College of Law summa cum laude, Articles Editor of the University of Illinois Law Review
M.B.A., 1993, Illinois State University, summa cum laude
B.S., 1989, University of Illinois College of Business
- Outside General Counsel to The Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium, developer/manager of the largest clinically valid database/dataset in the world for the treatment of medically complex neonatal and infant patients (Level IV NICUs), curating data contributed by its 45+ Member Hospitals in the U.S. and Canada.
- IP Counsel to a European digital fiber tracing technology company, leading negotiations with manufacturers and distribution partners abroad, and acquiring strategic patent portfolio licenses from Fortune 500 companies including NCR.
- Five-year tenure as IP and Technology Counsel to a large Illinois health care system (12 hospitals, 200+ facilities), handling IP/IT issues in several rounds of hospital divestitures, negotiating with physician and employee inventors through the commercialization path, handling contractual relationships with significant IT and supply-chain vendors, and creating best practices methods and agreements for system-wide use.
- IP Counsel to Bain Capital in 50+ acquisitions/investments in the information technology, medical device, pharmaceutical, software, consumer goods, materials sciences, and specialty retail fields, including the multi-national, $1.75 billion buyout of the Bath & Kitchen division of American Standard.
- Outside IP Counsel to a large Generic Pharmaceuticals manufacturing company, handling all technology/API licensing and exclusive manufacturing and distribution relationships.
- Outside Technology Counsel to a California-based Genetics company in its negotiations of Collaborative Research Agreements and associated patent licenses with Mayo Clinic, Vanderbilt, and Duke Universities involving genetic sequencing of biological materials to determine the predictive value of novel drug treatments.
- IP Counsel to Sara Lee Corporation/Hillshire Brands for a series of product-line divestitures in its coffee and food & beverage manufacturing portfolio.