December 1, 2009
By Petra Pasternak
THE RECORDER
SAN FRANCISCO – Arnold & Porter has set up an outpost in Palo Alto with four patent lawyers it swiped from Goodwin Procter.
Ginger Dreger, who had joined Goodwin Procter in March 2008 from Heller Ehrman, started as a partner today.
Associates Jeffery Bernhardt, Alissa Faris and James Fox and two patent agents made the move with her.
Dreger, who says her book of business is about $6 million, cited conflicts as the main reason she began considering other firms earlier this year. She was introduced to Arnold & Porter through Southern California recruiter Lawrence Watanabe this past summer. Dreger said work for all her clients, including Genentech, has come with her.
Kevin Dennis, who co-chairs Goodwin Procter’s Silicon Valley office, called the parting very amicable. “Ginger and I were talking a lot this morning, and it’s a pure conflict among clients “ as a result primarily of consolidation in the industry” she works in, he said.
He said Goodwin Procter has about 35 lawyers in Palo Alto, including four working on patent and trademark matters and a number of IP litigators. The firm entered California in 2006 and opened in Silicon Valley in June 2007. Dreger’s patent prosecution work was “one piece of the life sciences puzzle” there, Dennis said.
For the 675-lawyer Arnold & Porter, the foray into Silicon Valley is tentative. The firm has rented 9,134 square feet at 1400 Page Mill Rd. through January 2011, and the office will be managed from San Francisco. “We’re not formally opening an office in Palo Alto right now,” Arnold & Porter San Francisco office head Trent Norris said. “Rather than spread our efforts, we’ll be acting as one integrated office.”
Dreger will split her time between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, he said.
Prior to joining Goodwin Procter, Dreger headed the life sciences patent prosecution practice at then-Heller Ehrman in Palo Alto. Before that, she led the biotechnology patent prosecution practice in the San Francisco office of Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear.
With its headquarters in Washington, D.C., Arnold & Porter has grown incrementally in Northern California. Its San Francisco office opened in 2005 with three lawyers, and the office now counts 17, focused mainly on complex commercial litigation, intellectual property rights, environmental compliance and litigation, and antitrust litigation. In October, the firm added patent lawyer Todd Lorenz as counsel in San Francisco from King & Spalding.
Dreger said that of the firms she was looking at, she liked Arnold & Porter’s international reach (it has offices in London and Brussels)and complementary practice areas, such as its East Coast regulatory and patent prosecution groups. Overlap with her main clients helped; Arnold & Porter handles regulatory matters for Genentech.
She was also drawn by the firm’s culture, which she said reminded her of Heller Ehrman in the old days. “Even before I started I can’t tell [you] how many people have already reached out to me, and that means a lot to me,” Dreger said. “It is similar to Heller “ in a way as Heller used to be, but hopefully without the fall of Heller,” she added, laughing.