California

Firm overview

Husch Blackwell helps clients develop and preserve their intellectual property to maximize profits and secure a competitive edge. Our team has more than 100 intellectual property attorneys with tremendous experience in IP acquisition, maintenance, protection, enforcement, litigation, and commercialization. We partner with universities, research facilities, companies of all sizes, and individuals to turn their innovations into industry.

Our IP attorneys understand complex technologies, and they have prepared and prosecuted thousands of patents and trademarks across a wide range of industries. To accommodate clients’ need for global enforcement and protection, our team has assembled an international network of more than 300 associate firms in 120 countries. A Husch Blackwell attorney has worked directly and personally with every law firm in the network.

Firm overview

HG Law started as the patent practice spin-off from Ropes & Gray LLP. The HG Law team has extensive experience with representing clients of all sizes and across a multitude of industries around the globe in connection with intellectual property matters. All of our attorneys and patent agents have technical and scientific backgrounds, many of whom have graduate degrees. We are used to counseling and representing clients on high stakes complex matters – relying on both our legal analysis expertise and technological know-how.

We tailor our relationship for every one of our clients, recognizing that a cookie-cutter approach to IP representations is not adequate. We make it a point to understand our client’s business, its needs, and its goals. This underpins the work that we perform in the course of our representation.

HG Law is selective in hiring talented candidates with exceptional legal and technical/scientific backgrounds. We invest in our legal team and support staff. This includes providing each person with opportunities to work on a wide scope of projects in addition to specializing in a respective practice area. HG Law has developed an environment that fosters professional development and collegiality.

As a client, this means your matters will be handled by a team of HG Law professionals with a broad range of experience, who are able to learn about your business and your needs. This institutional knowledge will be a continuous mainstay during the course of our representation.

Firm overview

Weil offers a comprehensive, national IP practice, comprising Patent Litigation, Technology and IP Transactions, IP/Media (which encompasses trademark, copyright, music licensing, privacy, and false advertising matters), and our cross-disciplinary IP Counseling Practice.

Weil’s national Patent Litigation practice offers strong platforms in Silicon Valley, New York, and Washington, DC, with more than 30 practitioners nationally. We have earned a reputation as a go-to firm for high stakes patent litigation in all of the major venues, including in federal district courts, at the United States International Trade Commission, on appeal at the Federal Circuit, or before the Patent Office. Our patent litigators regularly handle matters where the rulings are game-changing and where the law, facts, and technology are complex. In many instances, these cases often have far-reaching impacts across entire industries. Importantly, many of our attorneys have degrees in chemistry, biology, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics. These technical and scientific backgrounds allow us to identify critical issues and quickly understand the technology at the forefront of a case. With the majority of our team licensed to practice before the U.S. Patent Office, our team has unique strategic advantages in being able to navigate the interplay of district court cases and IPR/post-grant proceedings. Indeed, our lawyers are leaders in inter partes review and covered business method review proceedings, having handled more than 300 of them since 2012.

Our Technology and IP Transactions group comprises 33 lawyers in New York, Silicon Valley and London who spend 100% of their time on technology and intellectual property transactions—a distinguishing feature of Weil—bringing deep expertise to client matters. We represent our clients in all stages of development, from start-ups to Fortune 50, across a broad range of industries. We are well known for our cutting-edge work across all forms of stand-alone technology and intellectual property transactions such as patent acquisitions, licensing agreements, joint ventures, strategic alliances, research and development collaborations, internet/e-commerce arrangements and other types of cross-border technology transactions.

Our IP/Media practice, which boasts nearly two dozen lawyers with IP expertise and courtroom experience, has a leading reputation for success dealing with and litigating cutting-edge IP issues. Leading social media platforms, digital music streaming companies, major media and entertainment companies, global e-commerce platforms and international financial services companies regularly turn to Weil’s IP/Media practice to manage: cutting-edge secondary liability issues; DMCA safe harbors and compliance requirements; music licensing; trademark and copyright licensing requirements; trademark strategy, enforcement and litigation; IP matters arising in the transactional context; false advertising claims; development of terms of service, fair use and assessment of infringement risks (both direct and secondary); and strategies associated with the clients’ service offerings and product development initiatives. Weil also has the nation’s pre-eminent service-side music copyright practice, and has litigated more than a dozen royalty rate-setting proceedings—far more than any other law firm. We work closely with our broad base of clients to coordinate these issues on a global basis, and over the last several decades, our lawyers have participated in many of the most significant trademark and copyright cases.

Weil’s clients benefit from our deep bench of leading practitioners with the full spectrum of IP capabilities. Clients of the group include: AbbVie; AIG; Alibaba; BASF; BBC Studios; Bio-Rad; Brookfield; CareDx; CBS; Comcast; eBay; Eli Lilly; Getty Images; General Electric; GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc.; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; HP, Inc.; Illumina; Intel; Johnson & Johnson; Kroger; Lenovo Group; Meta Platforms; Nuance Communications; Oracle; Pacific Biosciences; Palo Alto Networks; Pandora Media; Regeneron Pharmaceuticals; S&P Global; Samsung; Sanofi; SiriusXM; and Tesla; among others.

Firm overview

We are an IP Litigation powerhouse for technology, life sciences and health technology in patents, trade secrets and commercial litigation with unparalleled trial success at all levels at each forum and venue. Our approach integrates our practices to provide businesses with comprehensive intellectual property protections. Our litigation expertise and experience also gives us an edge in advising our clients on the likely outcomes of litigation, including in the context of corporate acquisitions and portfolio management. Our approach, which supports “small firm” key partner attention with the “large firm” resources ensures our clients receive effective and efficient representation at every stage of the case. We are committed to helping clients structure the most comprehensive and workable enforcement and defense for all aspects of their intellectual property. 

Bench and Jury Trials at the U.S. District Courts

• We have litigated and counseled on patent and trade secrets issues across a wide range of industries, including software, hardware, electronics, chemical processes, telecommunications, consumer goods, manufacturing, sales, financial services, and pharmaceuticals.
• We are also experts in §101 invalidity challenges with a near-perfect record in district court and the Federal Circuit, pursuing and obtaining attorneys’ fees, and obtaining wins in Federal Circuit appeals.
• We are experts in the nuances of life sciences patent litigation, including Hatch-Waxman Act and biosimilars patent litigation under the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act, and the intersecting FDA regulatory regime in which these cases operate. 

PTAB Proceedings

• We have handled over 400 post-grant proceedings before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board, on behalf of both petitioners and patent owners across a wide range of industries.
• Our attorneys have been hailed as ones who can be “trust[ed] . . . with crown jewels, and have been described as “PTAB mastermind[s],” “PTAB trial guru[s],” knowing the PTAB “like the back of [their] hands,” and “understand[ing] all the rules and subtleties of IPR proceedings better than anyone I’ve ever worked with.”
• Our attorneys worked on the first ever PTAB proceeding on the technology side and also led the first ever successful defense of a pharmaceutical patent.

ITC Section 337 Investigations

• We represent both complainants and respondents, and have been at the forefront of recent cutting-edge decisions at the ITC. 
• We have served as counsel in more than 60 Section 337 Investigations, and have appeared before each of the Presiding Administrative Law Judges (ALJs), including multiple successes before Customs in ensuring our clients’ products are not excluded from the United States. 

International Arbitrations

• We represent clients in all aspects of litigation related to arbitration, including bringing and defending motions to compel arbitration, obtaining and opposing interim and protective measures in aid of arbitration, seeking and opposing recognition of arbitral awards, seeking and opposing the annulment of arbitral awards, and disputes over the taking of evidence in the US in aid of international arbitrations and foreign litigation.
• We regularly draft, advise, and teach courses on the drafting and interpretation of arbitration and forum-selection agreements in circumstances ranging from simple two-party deals to complex commercial transactions involving multiple parties, jurisdictions, and applicable laws. We recognize that each matter is unique and strive to meet our client’s objectives in the most cost-effective manner.

Supreme Court and Appellate Review

• We have top-notch appellate capabilities and can handle an IP litigation matter from start to finish. 
• Our lawyers are skilled in the art of written and oral advocacy, as well as in simplifying technical arguments for generalist Federal Circuit judges.
• We devote our practice to the craft of conceiving and presenting argument on complex, law-intensive issues, bringing to bear our many years of experience in areas of law that cut across traditional legal disciplines, such as constitutional interpretation, damages, procedure, and jurisdiction.