Semiconductors
Counseling Established and Emerging Semiconductor Companies Worldwide
For more than fifty years, Fenwick has been a trusted business advisor to some of Silicon Valley’s most successful semiconductor companies. Our semiconductor clients now span the globe, and include market leaders and emerging innovators in all sectors of the semiconductor industry from EDA developers to fabless chip makers and test equipment producers.
Fenwick’s collaborative approach to serving our semiconductor clients includes attorneys, patent agents, engineers and staff scientists who have a deep understanding of the current business, legal and technical issues facing the semiconductor industry. The group’s primary services include:
Intellectual Property—We help our clients build powerful, highly valuable portfolios and protect and enforce semiconductor IP rights globally, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and licenses; our sophisticated IP counseling also supports the firm’s litigation and M&A groups.
Litigation—Our IP litigation practice has an excellent track record of resolving semiconductor industry disputes, including “bet-the-company” litigation.
Mergers & Acquisitions—Our integrated M&A deal teams tackle complex corporate, intellectual property, antitrust, benefits and tax issues specific to the semiconductor industry.
Licensing—We have extensive experience negotiating development agreements, OEM agreements, distribution agreements, manufacturing agreements, foundry supply agreements and strategic partnering agreements.
Securities—We work with analysts and regulators who cover the semiconductor industry, and have expertise in complex and creative financing transactions, including IPOs, convertible debt, high-yield debt, PIPES and shelf offerings.
Tax—We are recognized as one of the top cross-border tax practices in the United States, in both transactions and tax litigation.
Why Semiconductor Companies Choose Fenwick
Deep semiconductor industry intelligence
Many of our attorneys have backgrounds in computer science, electrical engineering and IC-related disciplines that enable us to provide semiconductor companies with practical and sound representation. This combined legal and technical expertise means we will provide you with advice that is efficient, relevant and in consideration of your unique business environment.
Deep involvement with the EDA industry
We have represented many leading EDA start ups including ECAD, SDA, Cooper & Chyan, PiE Design, Silicon Perspective, Novas, Denali, Jasper, Aprio, Berkeley Design, Tiburon Design and Virtio, have represented many EDA legends (Paul Huang, Glen Antle, Ping Chao, Prabhu Goel) in multiple startups, and have represented publicly-traded EDA companies such as Cadence and Synopsys in numerous securities offerings, acquisitions and other EDA-related transactions.
Access to our extensive network of investors
Our firm has strong connections to top-tier venture capital firms seeking to invest in semiconductor-related startup companies. We offer a systemized approach to connecting our clients with the appropriate investors based on stage of development, technology and amount/stage of investment.
A strategic partner to help you protect your intellectual property at every stage of development
Fenwick has been working with rapidly growing semiconductor companies at the forefront of innovation for more than five decades. We work diligently to build valuable portfolios and to enforce and defend all of your intellectual property rights.
An unwavering commitment to service
At Fenwick, we pride ourselves on delivering best-in-class legal services in a highly efficient and effective manner to companies of all sizes. Continually ranked as one of the top U.S. law firms for client service, we have numerous mechanisms for receiving and acting on client feedback to improve client service. Whether you are an industry leader or an emerging company, you deserve—and will receive—the same attention to detail, efficiency, cost-containment and personal attention for which we have become known.