Joe Calhoun, a registered patent attorney also licensed in Arkansas and California, has over twenty-five years of legal and related business experience in commercial  litigation and client counseling, especially in the intellectual property fields. His primary practice areas include the creation or registration of intellectual property rights, the guiding of clients’ commercialization of those rights, the assignment or licensing of such rights to or from others, and the enforcement of (or defense against) infringement claims.

After earning his  Bachelor of Science degree from Tulane University (Biology and Psychology), and graduating from law school at the University of San Francisco,  he subsequently returned home to Little Rock, Arkansas as a law clerk at the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Joe then entered private practice with a well known Little Rock business law firm, departing as a partner on the eve of 2000 to better concentrate his practice in the areas of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and business competition.

Currently a mentor at The Venture Center and actively supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Joe has long been involved in business start-up and expansion. In the 1990’s he represented the Technical Enterprise Center, Arkansas’ first business incubator, in assisting tenants organizing business operations and entering the market. He also formed a number of community development corporations to develop and implement plans to revitalize commercial districts and nearby housing. Mr. Calhoun also organized ContourMed, Inc., the first company to emerge from Arkansas BioVentures, the technology development incubator at UAMS.

Joe was Treasurer of the Arkansas Biotechnology Association from 1997 to 2001, and Treasurer of the Arkansas Technology Transfer Society from 1997 to 2003. He was the principal draftsman of  the Arkansas Biotechnology Training & Incentive Act of 1997, and provided assistance in the promulgation of regulations. He was involved in the Arkansas Venture Forum in 2002 and 2003, assisting in the planning of the Arkansas Venture Conference and grooming companies for making their presentations at the Conference. Joe was chairman of the Intellectual Property Law Section of the Arkansas Bar Association for 2006/2007; he was also chair for 2016/2017.  And in 2014, Joe was an active member of the Advisory Committee for the Life Sciences Emerging Technology Fund of the Central Texas (Austin) Regional Center of Innovation & Commercialization; that committee vetted companies and evaluated their applications for grant funding from the State of Texas.