About Dunstan Barnes

Dunstan H. Barnes is a Partner at McAndrews and practices in all areas of intellectual property law, with a special focus on protecting and analyzing design rights, which includes drafting and prosecuting design patent applications and conducting opinion work and due diligence investigations. Dunstan has considerable experience drafting and prosecuting utility patent applications and trademark applications in a range of technological fields and industries.

As a practitioner, Dunstan is an effective communicator and an outstanding writer, and is particularly skilled at communicating complex, abstract technical concepts clearly and compellingly. He is a skilled intellectual property advocate and adviser who helps his clients protect their innovations, particularly new designs, in both the United States and globally. He helps his clients acquire and protect their IP rights, as well as navigate the world of existing rights.

Dunstan is the current Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Design Rights Committee and Chair of the Litigation & Enforcement Subcommittee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) Industrial Designs Committee. He has been an invited speaker at conferences including AIPPI World Congress, AIPLA Annual Meeting, ABA-IPL Spring Meeting, and USPTO Design Day.

Dunstan graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he was President of the Intellectual Property Law Society, a Notes & Comments Editor for the Chicago-Kent Law Review, a Submissions Editor for the Journal of Intellectual Property, and a Co-Captain of the “Chicago-Kent Sportfeasors” soccer team. In addition, he competed in the 2013 American Bar Association’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition as a member of Chicago-Kent’s Moot Court Honor Society.

Prior to law school, Dunstan earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Metallurgy from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral research explored the development and enhancement of biomimetic calcium phosphate coatings applied to the endplate surfaces of artificial polymeric spinal disc devices. During his doctorate, Dunstan presented his research at five international conferences in the Netherlands, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States (twice). In addition, Dunstan assisted in a collaborative research project with the National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, India that focused on applying calcium phosphate coatings to metallic glasses for use in artificial limbs.

During his undergraduate studies at the University of Oxford, Dunstan completed a research project that involved the use of cathodoluminescence to measure stress at high resolution in structural ceramics.