Silicon Valley powerhouse Fenwick & West continued its streak of top-flight intellectual property deals and groundbreaking cases for its high-technology clients. In one top deal, the firm was special counsel to Chinese electronic-commerce outfit Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s $7.1 billion repurchase of about half of Yahoo! Inc.’s stake in the company. The firm advised Facebook Inc. on its $550 million purchase of the AOL Inc. patent portfolio from Microsoft Corp.
Fenwick’s intellectual property chairman, San Francisco partner David Hayes, helped Alibaba restructure numerous complicated intellectual property agreements between the two parties. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz of New York led the corporate side of the deal. "It’s a huge feather in our cap to be ranked up there in IP expertise with Wachtell on the corporate side," Hayes said.
