Betting the company became big business last year for Cooley. "For us," said Jim Brogan, chairman of the firm’s intellectual property practice, "we ended up with some pretty high-stakes things that all came in relatively a tight time frame."
One of those big cases was the closely followed litigation brought by Yahoo! Inc. on March 12 of last year. The litigation team led by Cooley chairman Stephen Neal, with co-counsel William Lee of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, defended Facebook Inc. against infringement claims pertaining to 12 patents. Facebook ended up purchasing the rights to more than 1,000 patents, including $550 million worth from Microsoft Corp., during the four months of litigation. Expanding its patent portfolio helped settle the case in a strategic no-cash deal reached on July 6, Brogan said. "The folks at Yahoo really underestimated Facebook as an adversary there," he said.
