A well-known patent-holding company, and one of Heller Ehrman’s most lucrative former clients, is claiming $50m (£33.5m) from the firm’s estate for extra costs incurred for having to find other lawyers to cover its cases.
Ronald A Katz Technology Licensing, which could owe Heller an undisclosed amount of contingency fees on pending cases against 48 companies, played an indirect role in the US firm’s demise. Its outside lawyers were among the 14 partners in the intellectual property (IP) group that moved to Covington & Burling when the firm was days away from a merger with Mayer Brown last summer.
