When six leading tech companies, including Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc., joined forces to snatch up Nortel Network Corporation’s patent portfolio for a record-shattering $4.5 billion this summer, all of them hired international law firms to advise on the bidding war, except for one: EMC Corporation. The Hopkinton, Massachusetts–based information technology company turned to its in-house legal team. The decision is a testament to the outsize ambitions of the 16 attorneys in its intellectual property and technology-licensing group, who have become a powerful voice both at the bargaining table and in the courtroom.
In addition to their work on the groundbreaking Nortel auction, this summer EMC’s IP lawyers moved to the front lines of patent reform. In a well-publicized court filing, they went on the offensive against nonpracticing entities (NPEs), pejoratively referred to as “patent trolls”—the much-maligned outfits that buy patents for the sole purpose of enforcing them in court.
