With the technology explosion that seemingly never ends, there’s never been a more exciting time to be an inventor, an innovator or a creator. But the same tech that brings an inventor’s ideas to life also open us up to complications, and challenges that make us vulnerable to threats from competitors who may want steal our great ideas. And that’s why we have Intellectual Property laws.

Michael Leachman is an attorney with Jones Walker who specializes in Intellectual Property: patents, trademarks and copyrights. In his decade at Jones Walker, Michael has prepared and prosecuted patent applications covering a broad spectrum of inventions and technologies in the mechanical, chemical, biomedical, bioscience, and nanotechnology fields, and handles trademarks, trade secrets, and unfair competition litigation in federal and state courts.

Jason Hugenroth knows a lot about patents and intellectual property. Jason is the owner of Inventherm, an engineering R&D company that specializes in machine design and thermal-fluid science for the medical, aerospace, defense, automotive and energy industries. Since Inventherm’s founding, Jason has earned more than 50 patents in compressor and thermal system technology—including an oil-less air compressor for a medical respirator product, basically a type of portable oxygen concentrator.

Photos over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard by Karry Hosford.