SAN FRANCISCO — The conventional wisdom was that the market would cool. After years of seeing firms throw money at patent litigators, the thinking was that the U.S. Supreme Court’s troll-curbing rulings last summer would chill new filings and, with them, a practice that’s been hot for years.
Filings dropped 29 percent in 2014 from the previous year, according to a report published by Unified Patents. But IP litigators are still a hot commodity. The past few months have seen a rash of high-profile IP hires. Last month Goodwin Procter poached partners from K&L Gates’ and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius’ IP practices to be its first two IP partners in the Bay Area, with designs on building up a strong IP presence in Northern California. In September, the same firm lured a five-partner New York IP team away from Kenyon & Kenyon. And in just the past two weeks, a patent litigator jumped from Latham & Watkins to Farella Braun + Martel, an Irvine-based IP boutique opened shop in Silicon Valley, and litigation boutique Kobre & Kim poached an IP lawyer from Kerr & Wagstaffe to establish a Northern California foothold.
