Mintz Levin Continues Expansion of San Diego Office

By Doug Sherwan
THE DAILY JOURNAL

The Boston-based law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC is adding four more attorneys to its San Diego office, including the local leader of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, the firm announced Monday.

Daniel T. Pascucci, who has been the managing partner of Buchanan’s San Diego office since 2005, and fellow Buchanan litigator Andrew D. Skale will join Mintz Levin as partners later this week, along with associates Nathan Hamler and Benjamin Wagner. The latest additions boost the number of attorneys at Mintz Levin, which launched its San Diego office just nine months ago, to 22.

“When we opened up here, we started off with a position of strength in the corporate practice, IP practice and employment practice areas,” said Craig Hunsaker, head of Mintz Levin’s San Diego office. “Over the last nine months, we’ve been trying as quickly as we can to build our strength in other key areas. One notable area is commercial complex litigation, especially complex litigation with a technical edge — patent litigation, trademark litigation, telecomm litigation — and in that respect, Dan and Andrew’s practice is ideal.”

Pascucci, who has led Buchanan’s California litigation group, and Skale are no strangers to Hunsaker. The trio, along with several other current Mintz Levin attorneys, all worked together at Fish & Richardson PC in the early 2000s. “One of the key reasons why we made the move is for the opportunity to reconnect with excellent attorneys that we worked with in the past and had great working relationships with,” Skale said, quickly adding, “Buchanan’s an excellent firm. They’re a real class act. We’ve enjoyed our tenure there.”

Pascucci boasts a wealth of experience representing clients in complex business litigation, intellectual property litigation, class-action defense, unfair competition and telecommunications-related cases. Last month, he achieved a significant victory on behalf of Sprint PCS, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a permanent injunction in favor of his client. The initial injunction, issued in July 2005 by the federal district court in San Diego, halted the county of San Diego’s process for regulating placement of cell sites in the county. Additionally, Pascucci obtained the first published decision in the United States to apply entry barrier provisions of the Telecommunications Act to wireless carriers.

Skale concentrates his practice on patent and trademark prosecution on behalf of companies and inventors in the fields of electronics, the Internet, business methods, software and mechanical arts. He also specializes in complex business litigation, including unfair business practices, class-action defense and intellectual property cases.

“(Mintz Levin) didn’t really have deep commercial litigation and IP litigation capability before they came on board,” said Larry Watanabe, a partner with legal search firm Watanabe & Nason LLC. “The goal of the San Diego office from the outset was to be a full-service office. It has a lot of momentum, and I expect to see that continue. I expect to see further hires in key strategic areas.”

Skale was attracted by Mintz Levin’s resources, most notably Los Angeles partner Harvey Saferstein, former president of the California State Bar Association.

“We like the fact they have a real strong West Coast presence,” Skale said. “We’re very excited because Mintz has an excellent platform that will help with our practice and benefit our clients.”

Mintz Levin expects to add other associates in the near future. “We’re very satisfied with the progress we’ve made so far, but we have pretty aggressive goals of what we’re trying to accomplish here,” Hunsaker said. “So we’re not going to rest on our numbers at this point. We have talked to an amazing number of people. I was very surprised, and continue to be surprised, at how much interest there is for the Mintz Levin platform.”

Mintz Levin features more than 90 attorneys, scientists and other professionals focused on the protection, licensing and enforcement of intellectual property rights. On the corporate transaction side, Mintz Levin completed more than 200 transactions with a value of more than $13.5 billion in 2006. The transactions included more than 80 merger and acquisition transactions totaling more than $12 billion.

“Mintz Levin has added top-quality corporate and intellectual property partners in both major tech areas (San Diego and Silicon Valley), which has been a challenge for many national law firms,” Watanabe said.