Seven years ago, Ann Cathcart Chaplin, then a fourth-year associate at Fish & Richardson, sat in a conference room in Michigan, waiting to depose a witness in a patent infringement case. When the opposing counsel and his client finally arrived, they vaguely acknowledged her, and proceeded to discuss details of the day’s impending testimony. Then the pair wondered aloud why the deposing lawyer was late. “That’s when I told them, ‘Well, I’m the lawyer; we’re actually waiting on the court reporter,’ ” Cathcart Chaplin says with a laugh. “ I’d been confused for the court reporter before, so I started to think maybe it could [become my] strategy, since they were talking about the case like I wasn’t even there.”
Joking aside, Cathcart Chaplin—a 37-year-old intellectual property litigator who is the managing partner of Fish & Richardson’s Twin Cities office—says that snubs like that have only stoked her ambition. She, like the relatively few other women who have made IP litigation their focus, says she’s used to being the only woman in the room. But the current boom in IP work has created opportunities for women. “Knowledge is an equalizer,” Cathcart Chaplin says. “If you can understand the technology or science, and break it down for a jury, no one cares if you’re a man or a woman.”
