IP Law & Business


	Last name
	First name

Top IP Firms	Mentions
Baker Botts	10
Howrey	8
Jones Day	7
Woodcock Washburn	7
Finnegan, Henderson	6
Kirkland & Ellis	6
Ropes & Gray	6
Alston & Bird	5
Fitzpatrick, Cella	5
Locke Liddell	5
Baker & McKenzie	4
Brinks Hofer	4
Brooks Kushman	4
Bryan Cave	4
Fish & Richardson	4
Foley & Lardner	4
Fulbright & Jaworski	4
Harness, Dickey	4
Marshall, Gerstein	4
McDonnell Boehnen	4
Orrick	4
Sidley Austin	4
Vinson & Elkins	4
Weil, Gotshal	4
Wilmer Cutler	4
Arnold & Porter	3
Carlson, Gaskey	3
DLA Piper	3
Duane Morris	3
Hunton & Williams	3
Jenner & Block	3
Kaye Scholer	3
King & Spalding	3
Leydig, Voit	3
Merchant & Gould	3
Morgan & Finnegan	3
Pillsbury Winthrop	3
Rader, Fishman	3
Wallenstein Wagner	3

IP Litigators	Mentions
Baker Botts	7
Howrey	7
Kirkland & Ellis	6
Jones Day	5
Alston & Bird	4
Orrick	4
Ropes & Gray	4
Finnegan, Henderson	3
Fitzpatrick, Cella	3
Foley & Lardner	3
Fulbright & Jaworski	3
Kaye Scholer	3
Locke Liddell	3
McDonnell Boehnen	3
Sidley Austin	3
Vinson & Elkins	3
Weil, Gotshal	3
Wilmer Cutler	3
Woodcock Washburn	3

Patents Prosecutors	Mentions
Woodcock Washburn	4
Baker Botts	3
Finnegan, Henderson	3
Marshall, Gerstein	3

Methodology: Earlier this year we asked the general counsel and IP chiefs of the Fortune 250 which firms they primarily used for IP litigation, and which firms they used for patent counsel. Of the 250 companies, 91 responded. Respondents were asked to limit their selections to seven firms per category.

Who Protects IP America: 2006
Our annual survey of the firms Corporate America calls on for IP help.

Introduction by Catherine Wigginton
Research by Abdul Washington
IP Law & Business/November 2006

Reprints & Permissions

Each year, we ask in-house counsel at the Fortune 250 to name their go-to firms, specifically their primary IP litigation and patent firms. And each year, we see the same Am Law 100 firms at the top of the list. This year Baker Botts topped the chart with ten mentions, closely followed by Howrey with eight mentions, and Jones Day and Woodcock Washburn, which both had seven [see list at right]. In 2005 Jones Day and Kirkland & Ellis led the pack with ten mentions; and Baker Botts tied with Alston & Bird with eight.

The consistency of the top firms is telling and, we think, reliable. The actual rankings, however, are a bit more arbitrary, as there is an unquestioned survey effect. Not only do corporations make changes to their hiring rosters, sometimes companies don't respond to our annual query. Baker Botts landed at the top this year because it has big clients, and because those big clients chose to answer the survey. For instance, firm client Marsh & McLennan responded to our survey for the first time in four years. At the same time, Verizon Communications Inc. and Countrywide Financial Corporation added Baker Botts to their lists. (None of these companies responded to requests for comment for this article.) The firm also lost a mention: CenterPoint Energy started using Bracewell & Giuliani for patent work, although it still names Baker Botts as its IP litigation firm. Bracewell isn't a new hire for CenterPoint, either. Albert Kimball, a partner in the firm's Houston office, has been doing the company's patent work since CenterPoint split off from Houston Industries eight years ago.

Our survey this year, to which 91 companies responded, highlights another continuing trend: While the Fortune 250 hires big firms to handle IP litigation, many still work with boutiques--firms with under 50 lawyers--particularly for patent work. More than one-third of the 121 firms named in the patent counsel column have between two and 50 attorneys. For litigation, boutiques make up about a fourth of the list. Only two--Brooks Kushman, with 42 lawyers, and Rader, Fishman & Grauer, with 34 lawyers--were mentioned more than once.

There's a third and disappearing category of IP firms. These are the IP specialists who are too big to be small, but never want to be very big. Their standard-bearer on our chart is Philadephia-headquartered Woodcock Washburn, which, through a mix of litigation and patent work, tied for third in our rankings, with seven mentions. Probably the biggest reason that the small firms survive: They're taking work that The Am Law 100 doesn't want. Howrey, for example, has shed most of its patent prosecution practice, citing conflicts. According to a paper published last month by Foley & Lardner's Harold Wegner, there are only 900 registered patent attorneys out of 25,000 lawyers in the top 20 firms on The Am Law 100.

There are other reasons to hire small. Douglas Taylor, chief patent counsel at Minneapolis-based General Mills, Inc., uses two local boutiques for patent prosecution: Kagan Binder (13 lawyers) and Patterson, Thuente, Skaar & Christensen (26 lawyers). "You get a better bang for your buck with small firms whose primary work is patent �prep and pros' than with big firms who do patent �prep and pros' plus litigation," says Taylor, adding that he gets more attention from small firms that make their money primarily from prosecution. Theodore Olds III, name partner at Carlson, Gaskey & Olds, a 13-lawyer firm located 30 minutes north of Detroit that received three mentions this year, says 90 percent of his firm's work is for big companies with in-house patent attorneys. Much of that work originated with United Technologies Corporation, which first became Olds's client in 1995, when he worked at Howard & Howard, another Michigan firm. United had an automotive division at the time and hired Olds's former colleague as an in-house attorney. When the division needed help with patent work, the former coworker turned to Olds. Within two to three years, Olds was handling the bulk of the company's work. When Olds cofounded his current firm six years ago, United came along.

Olds's relationship with United Technologies helped expand his client base, as UT's in-house attorneys left to work for Fortune 250 companies like Masco Corporation and ArvinMeritor, Inc. (which didn't respond to our survey) and other major corporations, including Lucent Technologies, which dropped from 247 to 255 on Fortune's 2006 list.

Woodard, Emhardt, Moriarty, McNett & Henry, a 125-year-old, 40-lawyer firm in Indianapolis, picked up what looked like some new business this year. For the first time, Duke Energy Corporation mentioned that it used Woodard for patent work. But as name partner John McNett explains, Duke Energy isn't exactly a brand-new client. Woodard, Emhardt originally worked with power company Cinergy Corp., which merged into Duke Energy last April. There's no big secret to holding on to a client, McNett says: "You do good, timely work at a good price." The Woodard partner who does much of the Duke Energy work bills $300-$350 an hour, while McNett charges $400-$450.

In a sense, McNett has been working on landing Duke Energy since 1970, when he joined Woodard, Emhardt. As a new attorney, one of his first assignments was handling patent applications for Gato-rade. His client was Stokely-VanCamp, an Indiana-based canned foods company that had acquired the rights to Gatorade from the University of Florida in the late 1960s. Stokely-VanCamp's general counsel was Don Bogart. When Quaker Oats acquired Stokely-VanCamp in the 1980s, Bogart joined energy company Public Service Indiana (PSI) and hired McNett as IP counsel. PSI then merged with Cinergy in 2005.

In this booming market, having Fortune 250 clients doesn't guarantee survival. At the end of September, one of the small firms mentioned in our survey disbanded: Wallenstein & Wagner, a 22-lawyer Chicago firm that had three mentions, closed its doors after 70 years, despite having two major clients, McDonald's Corporation and Deere & Company. Eight Wallenstein lawyers--including five partners--went to McDermott Will & Emery's Chicago office. Five of the Wallenstein refugees decided to stick with an IP firm, joining Banner & Witcoff.

Wallenstein is just the latest in a long line of vanished firms. Still, as the small firms that crowd our survey show, there is a future for the patent boutique. "The true boutiques that have traditionally involved the small practice of a handful up to a few dozen attorneys can do quite well," says Foley's Wegner. "The only real losers are the 100-plus lawyer pure patent players, who wish to style themselves as boutiques, but a generation ago fashioned themselves as the large firms that handled patent litigation." This year, at least, Woodcock Washburn would beg to differ.