Mountain View, CA (April 23, 2015) – Fenwick & West is pleased to announce that six partners have been recognized among California’s top intellectual property partners by the Daily Journal. Partners Andrew Bridges, David Hadden, Jennifer Kelly and Laurence Pulgram were named among the top 75 IP litigation attorneys and Bob Hulse and Rajiv Patel were recognized among the top 25 patent prosecution attorneys in the state.
With six honorees, no other firm was better represented than Fenwick.
IP litigation partner and Daily Journal honoree Andrew Bridges has 30 years of complex litigation experience dedicated to trial and appellate litigation, arbitration and strategic counseling in high-stakes matters for Internet, technology and consumer-focused companies.
Last month, Bridges won $5.2 million in attorney’s fees and $424,000 in costs for Usenet service providers Giganews and Livewire after securing a total victory in November in a hard-fought copyright infringement case brought by frequent copyright plaintiff Perfect 10.
"I find Perfect 10 an intriguing litigant with unusual challenges and provocations," Bridges, who has defended several tech companies against Perfect 10, told the Daily Journal. "It's a plaintiff that likes to monetize the vexation that it can cause to a defendant."
Bridges is currently lead counsel in several major cases, including one case defending a major auto manufacturer in which plaintiff seeks to restrict, and impose royalties upon, automobile equipment that allows consumers to store music from CDs to onboard navigation and infotainment systems and another case defending a major cable company facing copyright claims for allegedly failing to cut off Internet service to thousands of subscribers based upon allegations of BitTorrent usage.
Honoree and patent litigation partner David Hadden resolved two patent litigation cases for Amazon and another for online real estate company Zillow this past year. He defended Zillow after its competitor LendingTree sued Zillow for $100 million in damages for alleged infringement of two patents, on which LendingTree’s founder was the lead inventor.
"[It was] a major victory in a rare patent trial among competitors," Hadden told theDaily Journal. "Our team secured this victory because we had a deep understanding of the technology and were able to teach that technology to the jury in a clear and understandable manner using compelling visuals."
This year, Hadden also secured $820,000 in attorney’s fees for his start-up client VoxerNet, following a July 2014 summary judgment of non-infringement in a patent dispute with plaintiff IPVX Patent Holdings,
For the fourth straight year, patent partner Bob Hulse has been recognized by the Daily Journal among the top 25 portfolio managers in California. Based in Silicon Valley, Hulse helps high-technology and life sciences companies develop and curate powerful patent portfolios to protect innovative technologies and defend against patent trolls.
As lead outside patent counsel for Facebook, he manages the bulk of the company’s global patent portfolio and has prosecuted much of the social media giant's foundational patents. Most recently, the Daily Journal notes, he has begun managing the patent portfolio of Oculus VR, which Facebook acquired for $2 billion last year.
Working with innovative companies like Oculus, Hulse told the Daily Journal, "You kind of have to be a futurist.”
"You have to help a company look beyond what's patentable and toward what would be a valuable feature to protect," he said.
For the second year-in-a-row, IP litigation partner Jennifer Kelly was recognized among the top 75 IP litigators in California. Also recognized among the top entertainment attorneys in California last year, Kelly focuses her commercial and IP litigation and counseling work on companies in the gaming industry. Her clients include brand names like Supercell, CBS Interactive, Glu Mobile, Intuit, Nextdoor.com, King and SEGA.
Kelly, along with fellow honoree partner Laurence Pulgram, helped secure a resounding and unqualified victory for King.com this past year in a hotly-contested copyright battle with Hong Kong-based online game provider 6Waves. She is currently representing Glu Mobile in asserting claims against Canada’s Hothead Games that it’s “Kill Shot” infringes copyright and trade dress on Glu’s “Deer Hunter 2014.”
"I think what makes these [copyright litigation] cases more prevalent [in the gaming industry], in addition to the fact that everyone is getting into the mobile space, is that it's so much easier to copy a mobile game than the old school console-based games," Kelly told the Daily Journal, adding that growing up she played video games on standalone consoles like the Atari 2600.
Also for the second year standing, patent partner Rajiv Patel was recognized by the Daily Journal among the top 25 patent portfolio managers in California. With clients like GoPro, Twitter and Opera Software, Patel is among go-to patent attorneys for technology powerhouses. He’s recognized as an attorney who works with clients from the start-up phase through and after an exit through an initial public offering or acquisition.
No client represents Patel’s growth with a company more than GoPro, with whom he began working when it was just a strap to hold a camera in place on a customer’s wrist. Patel told the Daily Journal that he worked with GoPro Chief Executive Officer Nick Woodman to come up with a strategy to protect his innovative technology without breaking the bank.
“The biggest difference in working with startups and emerging companies is you don't have the budgets that well-established companies have," Patel told the Daily Journal. “That limits what you can do to develop the IP portfolio from the beginning."
Ultimately, when GoPro went public this past year in the largest stock debut by a consumer electronics company in 23 years, Patel said that the strength of the patent portfolio showed that "GoPro [took] the appropriate steps to protect its innovations and technology."
Honoree and IP litigation partner Laurence Pulgram brings 30 years of courtroom experience in technology litigation to bear for his clients as trial and appellate counsel. This includes successful trials to verdict in commercial, IP and employment cases in state and federal courts and arbitrations and winning oral arguments in numerous courts of appeal.
The Daily Journal noted that “Pulgram prevailed after a tumultuous lawsuit against trademark lawyer Raj Abhyanker” on behalf of his client Nextdoor.com, with whom he teamed with awardee Jennifer Kelly. Abhyanker had originally brought suit against Nextdoor for “stealing trade secrets and illegally using the name ‘Nextdoor,’” the Daily Journal added.
In addition, the last year brought several other complete victories for Pulgram’s clients, including: Symantec, which won dismissal on the pleadings of unfair competition claims based on alleged undisclosed vulnerabilities; Pandora, which obtained dismissal of class action claims based on alleged use of customer information; and a major internet media company, which obtained complete dismissal with no payment on claims of secondary copyright infringement claims.
About Fenwick & West
Fenwick & West provides comprehensive legal services to ground-breaking technology and life sciences companies at every stage of their lifecycle. We craft innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions for established and emerging companies on issues ranging from venture capital, public offerings, joint ventures, M&A and strategic relationships, to intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, taxation, antitrust, and employment and labor law. For more than four decades, Fenwick has helped some of the world's most recognized companies become and remain market leaders. For information about a career at Fenwick visit us at fenwick.com/careers.