Mountain View, CA (January 17, 2014)– Fenwick & West is pleased to announce that the firm has been named Technology Group of the Year by Law360.
“Fenwick & West LLP was an all-around technology powerhouse in 2013 as it advised a roster that includes Silicon Valley’s biggest names in billions worth of mergers and acquisitions, secured crucial trademark wins and created innovative defenses in securities litigation, earning it a spot on Law360’s Practice Groups of the Year,” the profile begins.
The profile features Fenwick’s work for client Cisco Systems on 11 acquisitions, including Cisco’s acquisition of Sourcefire for $2.7 billion, “many of them overlapping purchases that required the firm to meet tight deadlines and with half of the complex deals involving international acquisitions.” Nearly half of the 11 acquisitions were cross-border, with Cisco acquiring companies based in Israel, Austria, Czech Republic and England.
“Other mergers and acquisitions highlights for the tech firm included representing Chinese semiconductor manufacturer Spreadtrum Communications Inc. in a $1.78 billion acquisition in March by a subsidiary of the state-controlled Tsinghua Group. The firm also represented GoPro camera maker Woodman Labs in a $200 million partial acquisition by Foxconn Electronics Inc. that valued GoPro at $2.25 billion.”
The profile also lauds the strength of Fenwick’s securities litigation team, which was named California’s Securities Litigation Department of the year by The Recorder.
“On the securities litigation front, Fenwick lawyers scored dismissals in four separate significant class actions within weeks of one another for Green Dot Corporation, Equinix Inc., Symantec and Cisco.”
The profile also notes Fenwick’s victory for South Korea-based Suprema Inc. saying that “Fenwick lawyers landed a precedential ruling from the Federal Circuit” when the Federal Circuit vacated a 2011 International Trade Commission exclusion order based on inducement of infringement on the ground that the ITC lacked authority to exclude products where inducement of infringement was the sole basis for doing so and the alleged direct infringement did not occur until after importation.
“Our victory for Suprema has changed that landscape,” Dickson told Law360. “It’s a meaningful development, and other parties will really benefit from that ruling.”
As noted by the Federal Circuit opinion, the Fenwick team led by Darryl Woo was the first to raise the theory that the ITC’s statutory authority does not extend to remedy claims based solely on allegations of induced infringement where the direct infringement first occurs after importation.
Fenwick’s trademark team is also featured for its big wins this year, helping client Twitter register its TWEET mark after a four-year dispute. Registration of the mark was the culmination of over four years of trademark disputes, oppositions (as complainant and defendant), and litigation in federal court after the USPTO first suspended Twitter’s attempt to trademark the term because of allegedly similar marks held by other companies. As noted in the profile, Fenwick also “guided client Pinterest Inc. to a $7.2 million win in a trademark dilution case against a cybersquatter.”
“With a client roster that includes a who’s who of the tech world, including Facebook Inc., Pinterest Inc., Google Inc., Dropbox Inc., Twitter Inc., Amazon.com Inc, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard Co., Symantec Corp., Electronic Arts Inc., Square Inc. and Spotify Ltd., among others, Fenwick & West also works extensively with startups and through its significant venture capital business to build relationships with the next big tech companies.”
In the article, Chairman Richard Dickson told Law360 that a key part of Fenwick’s practice is the firm’s venture capital group which represents “what will be the next big companies” and the venture capitalists that invest in them.
“Our focus is a strategic advantage,” Dickson said. “Every employment attorney, every antitrust attorney, every corporate attorney spends virtually all their time with tech companies, and that’s powerful. It makes them not only someone with subject-matter expertise but also industry expertise. It’s all we do.”
“It’s a very rewarding practice,” he added. “We work with a lot of companies that are trying to change the world."
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.