Who Represents America's Biggest Companies 2012: Kings of IP

Lisa Shuchman

Corporate Counsel

2012-10-01 00:00:00.0

Protecting innovation has become increasingly important to the country's top corporations. And when it comes to prosecuting patents, IP boutiques still appear to be the go-to firms for America's Fortune 100 companies.

In our rankings of IP firms used by America's biggest companies for prosecution work, 13 of the top 19 qualify as IP specialty shops. On the patent prosecution side, the top two, Chicago's Banner & Witcoff and Michigan-based Brooks Kushman, had six mentions each on patents prosecuted for Fortune 100 companies between June 2011 and June 2012. [For more information, see the index of most mentioned firms by category.]

Several large general practice firms also made the list, including Alston & Bird and Foley & Lardner, with five mentions each—a sign that some of these firms that have been trying to boost their patent prosecution practices have been successful.

For IP litigation, general practice firms dominate the list. It's true that the number one spot was grabbed by Fish & Richardson, a firm that specializes in IP. But given that it has more than 350 attorneys, it's hard to call Fish a boutique. The Boston-based firm, which has claimed the top spot for IP litigation for the past two years, was retained by 11 Fortune 100 clients to handle litigation matters.

It was followed by Delaware-based Morris Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, which was mentioned by nine of the Fortune 100, and DLA Piper, which got seven mentions. Portland, Oregon–based Klarquist Sparkman, which claims such heavyweight clients as Microsoft Corporation, Amazon.com Inc., and General Electric Company, is the only other IP specialty firm that handled enough litigation work for Fortune 100 clients to qualify for inclusion in our IP litigation rankings.  [See the full results from this year's survey.]