When companies come to Heather Slotnick with their IP challenges, they're not hiring a traditional patent attorney. They're hiring someone who solves problems like an engineer.
That mindset comes from somewhere. At General Motors, she debugged electromagnetic interference issues the way an electrical engineer would: understand the constraints, identify which variables matter most, optimize for the outcome, eliminate unnecessary noise. That same methodical approach now defines how she works as Managing Partner at MLO.
Most patent attorneys process patents. Heather counsels companies on which patents actually matter to their business. It's a fundamentally different way of seeing intellectual property, and it's why companies working with MLO tend to get better results.
To understand how she got here, you have to go back to the ‘80s. In high school, Heather was excelling at math and science. When she expressed interest in engineering, her counselor discouraged her. Engineering was demanding, the counselor said, and there weren't many women in the field. It would be a lonely path.
Heather came home and told her mother, a computer science professional who'd built her own career in tech. Her mother listened, then pushed back. If Heather was strong in math and science, if she enjoyed solving technical problems, then engineering was worth pursuing.
Her mother's perspective won out.
By the time Heather arrived at General Motors, she was thriving. She was part of the team that was challenged to stop the "Phantom Wipe" - a ghostly signal making windshield wipers activate themselves for a single random wipe. They found the interference, developed a technical fix to install shields, and then navigated the reality of implementing it across different teams and modules.The experience offered a lesson. She'd loved the sharp vertical climb of co-op programs, rotating through different groups every quarter, learning new technologies constantly. A traditional engineering career meant watching that learning curve gradually flatten over time. She realized she wanted something different. She wanted to keep learning at that intensity.
A mentor at GM mentioned patent law. Patent attorneys encounter new technology with every case. You could spend 30 years and never repeat the same technical problem twice.
Heather got into the University of Michigan and left GM to pursue a law degree full-time.
Surprisingly, law school was harder than engineering school for Heather. The constant reading and writing weren't her strengths. Her brain was wired for math and spatial reasoning, not the abstraction of case law. But she saw it as a means to an end. She put her head down and made it through.
What she discovered was better than the promise. Patent law delivered exactly what she wanted: a perpetual learning curve. Every case brought new technology. Every client brought new problems.
Then her friend called back. Mattel was working on a new line of Batman toys for an upcoming film. One of the new designs was a motorcycle that popped out of the Batmobile. Would she want to work on the patents?
Batman had been Heather's favorite superhero since childhood. A hero who relies on intellect, gadgets, and sheer determination to save the day. The appeal was irresistible.
She took on the project. And just like that, everything changed.
With the Batman project complete, Mattel started sending more work. Soon Barbie entered the picture. There was something surreal about jumping from the Dark Knight to Malibu Dreamhouses, but with each new project, the firm grew. New clients arrived. New team members joined. New systems emerged. The thrill of it all was that none of it was planned.
The firm that started as a one-person operation had become something bigger, not through strategy, but through the willingness to say yes to the unexpected.
That openness to pivoting informs how Heather works with clients today.
Most companies come to counsel having already made decisions. Heather reverses this. She asks: What's your actual business problem? What feature makes customers choose your product? Is that feature new? And most importantly: is that where your IP budget should go?
The distinction matters. Innovation and business value aren't the same thing. An invention might be brilliant and completely irrelevant to why anyone buys your product. When budgets are tight, that distinction is the difference between an IP strategy that protects you and one that drains resources while competitors copy the features that actually matter.
One of her most counterintuitive practices is telling clients not to file patents. She conducts patentability analysis on inventions whenever possible. If the probability of success is low, she counsels against it. If there's no clear argument for success, she declines to file.
But the bigger issue she sees constantly is founders or executives who disclose technology publicly or start selling before filing. In most countries, disclosure before filing means you can never get protection. Your competitors can make, use, and sell it anywhere in the world with impunity. That's the biggest mistake she sees.
The team is mostly engineers. The same analytical thinkers who can follow complex technology and spot real problems. Everyone works with clients like semiconductor companies, software developers, solar manufacturers, telecom companies, medical device developers. Anything except biotech.
Turnover is remarkably low at MLO. People stay. They like working closely with clients instead of processing cases like widgets.
If Heather could talk to her younger self, she wouldn't focus so much on grades or certifications or prestige schools.
She'd focus on mentors. The most important thing is finding the right boss and having mentors around you. When she was coming up, people didn't emphasize that enough. When young engineers ask her about choosing between two jobs, her first question isn't about salary or title. It's: "Tell me about your boss. Who's going to mentor you? How many people in that organization can you learn from?
The learning curve, that sharp exhilarating climb where you don't know much and you're learning constantly, only happens if you're surrounded by people who know more and are willing to teach.
Heather got that at GM through a co-op program. She's built her firm to guarantee it for everyone on her team.
The Phantom Wipe was solved decades ago. The shields went in. The vehicles shipped.
But the way Heather thinks, methodically and systematically, approaching problems with curiosity rather than certainty, testing assumptions against evidence, focusing on what actually matters instead of what seems impressive, that's still her operating system.
Every time a company comes in convinced their invention will revolutionize the market, Heather doesn't tell them they're wrong. She helps them figure out if that revolution is what they should focus their budget on. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the real value is somewhere else entirely, hidden in a feature nobody expected to matter but customers want.
She listens carefully, asks good questions, and helps teams see their own systems more clearly.
That's not typical attorney work.
But then again, Heather's always thought like an engineer.
Radeus Labs' ongoing interview series featuring the engineers, advisors, and industry leaders shaping the future of high-performance computing, SATCOM systems, and mission-critical technology.