August 24, 2010

LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL

By Anna Scott and Craig Anderson

LOS ANGELES – In a major coup, the Los Angeles office of DLA Piper has lured a five-partner group of intellectual property lawyers from Hogan Lovells, led by high-profile litigator Richard de Bodo.

Besides de Bodo, who headed Hogan Lovells’ West Coast IP practice, the group includes partners Siegmund Gutman, Robert Benson, Christopher Broderick and Troy Schmelzer, and counsel Lawrence McClure. All of them will be joining DLA as partners.

De Bodo said the departure was primarily because of conflicts that arose after the merger earlier this year of the firm’s predecessors, the Washington D.C.-based Hogan & Hartson and the London-based Lovells.

“With the merger of Hogan and Lovell’s we’ve run into a greater amount of conflicts, so we’ve been trying to address those for some period of time,” he said, but declined to detail what they were. “We ultimately decided we would explore other possibilities.”

When Hogan & Hartson announced it would combine with Lovells in December 2009, firm managers touted the combination of Hogan’s California practice and Lovells’ intellectual property strength as one of the merger’s selling points.

The DLA-bound group’s departure now removes half of Hogan Lovells’ IP partners in Los Angeles, and about 20 percent of its total partners in the city.

“We will continue to have a leading IP practice, and plan to grow in California,” said Hogan Lovells Co-Chief Executive Officer J. Warren Gorrell Jr. He conceded, however, that firm has work to do now that de Bodo and his group have left.

“We will be essentially starting over in the IP area in Southern California,” he said.

De Bodo declined to comment on how much business he and his colleagues will bring to DLA Piper, or whether they expect to bring over more Hogan partners or associates in the coming months.

As a whole, the group adds strength to DLA Piper’s presence in electronics-related issues in Asia and life sciences, and expands its geographic reach – three areas the firm is actively trying to build up, said John Allcock, a San Diego-based partner, who is the global co-chair and U.S. chair of the firm’s IP practice.

“This is easily a home run,” he said. “Rich’s group brings great strength in the Asia region, Japan in particular, great strength in the life sciences space and they fill out our Southern California platform.”

DLA Piper U.S. Managing Partner Terence O’Malley was equally enthusiastic.

“We’re very excited,” he said. “You don’t get an opportunity to add a group like this every day. Rich is a very accomplished patent litigator, and we have a very successful patent litigation practice.”

The group will start at DLA Piper sometime after Aug. 31, de Bodo said.

De Bodo joined what was then Hogan & Hartson to head the firm’s West Coast IP practice in 2006 after almost two decades at Irell & Manella. The Harvard Law and Harvard College alumnus is a major coup for DLA Piper.

In recent years, he represented clients in high-stakes patent cases including Dow Jones & Co. in a dispute over Internet search technology; Abraxis Bioscience Inc. and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. in drug company litigation; and Japanese technology company Seiko Epson Corp. against an infringement case filed by a holding company.

At Irell, de Bodo made his reputation working with partner Morgan Chu, and represented Stac Electronics in a famous patent infringement case against Microsoft Corp. in 1994 that ended with a $120 million verdict and an injunction against the software giant. Microsoft later settled the case.

Gutman, a former senior counsel at Amgen Inc., specializes in patent litigation, with an expertise in the biotechnology arena. Benson also focuses on patent litigation and represented a variety of clients in patent infringement, copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation cases, among other matters. Broderick practices in all aspects of intellectual property law with an emphasis on litigation. Schmelzer concentrates on U.S. patent prosecution, international patent portfolio management and strategic counseling with a special focus on matters involving wireless communication systems. McClure specializes in patent prosecution and patent dispute litigation.

DLA’s O’Malley said the deal came together over the past couple of months with the help of San Diego-based recruiter Larry Watanabe. “There was a mutual attraction,” O’Malley said. “It was a package deal,” he added, meaning all six partners came together.