One Example: – August 21, 2018 – Venable LLP, an American Lawyer Global 100 firm, and Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto, one of the world’s leading intellectual property firms, have reached an agreement for Fitzpatrick to join Venable.
With the addition of the Fitzpatrick practice, the firm will have . . . about 175 IP lawyers – making it one of the largest IP groups in the country. This agreement will increase the size of Venable’s New York City presence to more than 160 lawyers, placing it among the largest firms in the city. [DC Note: Fitzpatrick currently has about 100 IP lawyers]
I love opposites.
Has anyone considered the opposite of “firm mergers”?
Depending on context:
dissolution
bankruptcy
disbursement
breakup
spinoff
I simply meant wobbly mergers.
Sometimes in this profession we need some humour.
Actually, the complete opposite is: wobbly mergers hit the ground running.
Several times in past years I was impressed with patent attorneys in Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto and their work product.
I worry that large conglomerate law firms will turn into ruthlessly solely business driven [“what billing did you bring in THIS quarter”] operations, like many large corporations? Even though patent litigation does not lend itself to normal business planning. Including a high percentage of unpredictable-in-advance client pre-trial settlements, IPRs with surprisingly good newly uncovered prior art, IC and other surprise problems, unexpected Markman claim interpretations, and other such billing-killing surprises. Not even to mention potentially treating prep and persecution as a mere “loss leader” convenience for only certain clients.
“will turn into ruthlessly solely business driven [“example business model”] operations, ”
Being “ruthlessly solely business driven” is less the problem and “example business model” is more the problem.
Note that this true for ANY application of the business model of “what billing did you bring in THIS quarter.”
Business models simply need to be better than that.
The title of the post is interesting. Are there any other mergers in the air?
Great news! Lots of synergy there. I must say that Venable’s office in DC is in the best looking building I have ever seen
Any Rep u k k kes out there?
LOL
Criminal pieces of shirt.
Silence = complicity.
Rot in hell, you disgusting p i gs.
Prof. Crouch, please put your pet on a leash.
Omerta. Conspiracies of silence, to defeat the Rule of Law? A good subject for a lawyer blog, I would say.
Many blankets of silence here too in Europe, about the VW diesel engine scandal, which has its roots about 20 years ago, and which the public authorities in the USA exposed to the light, relatively recently. How much did the VW Board and owners of VW already know though, and how early did they know it.
The wheels of justice (other than those of diesel engines) do truly grind extremely slow. The Chief Executive of VW subsidiary AUDI languishes in prison and, rumour has it, the former Chief Executive of Group VW is lined up to be next, all many years after the first VW engineer was convicted (also in the USA).
Which is the more disturbing thought; a strong association to scandal with just one particular political party, or the suspicion that both “sides of the House” in Germany were equally “complicit” in the diesel engine scandal?
In the US, the big conspiracy is to burn down the patent system and weaken IP rights. The real question is to what extent Obama took money directly for doing so? And the real question too is how many of our professors are bought off boys and girls.
Reading a law “journal” article in the US is like reading a brief but without the ethical constraints and without the attribution that the person writing the brief is advocating for one side.
(I think Germany knew what VW was doing. The point is the group is to help the German people.)
We all know that Obama was being blackmailed by the lizard people to do their bidding. That is why we never saw his super long form birth certificate.
Save the patent system, save the world.
Yes Ordinary because evidence and reality mean nothing.
[citation needed]
There have been plenty of cites Ordinary that I have posted. Including Google’s influence on legislation and Obama.
You play the game that in each blog post all previous cites are forgotten. Why is it that the anti movement is so unethical?
I am just waiting to get them from an unbiased source that is trustworthy (i.e. not you).
?? The evidence I’ve posted was not from me. I merely posted links.
B-b-but the links were from you…
Only 2/3 of American Millennials firmly believe the Earth is round, 2% of Americans firmly believe the Earth is flat, and 7% are not sure.
9% of Americans 18-24 say, “I always thought the world was round but recently but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts.”
link to forbes.com
I am working on an invention that will appeal to these people.
Maybe something that will keep them from sliding off the Earth during the next Harmonic Convergence (when too many people play the same note on their harmonicas at the same time).
Or maybe a navigation system that takes advantage of the “fact” that the Earth is flat. (The reason the GPS system is so complicated is because they have to pretend the Earth is round.)
Will it be patent eligible?
The Patent Office cannot even keep their own computer systems working. How could they be qualified to give an opinion as to whether the Earth is flat or round or substantially spherical?
Someone should ask President Trump whether the Earth is round or flat so we will finally have the Truth.
(And the Moon is flat, too. That is why we see only one side of it. It has only one side.)
As to “good stuff for a lawyer blog,” the feeble attempt to bolster this site’s biggest blight is disgusting.
Plenty of available forums for that kind of stuff. Your “rah rah” is as out of place as the rants themselves.
Max, interesting surveys in the U.S. say the real problem is the large percentage of the population that cannot tell the difference between truth or denial of real conspiracy stories, even as proven by judicial decisions or presidential tape recordings, and numerous others that are ridiculous.
We live in a reality TV world now. I have some friends from Gen X (I am a baby boomer) and when I tell them politician X is feathering their own nest by using his political power, they say so what.
They don’t seem to care about corruption. It is get yours and if someone else is getting theirs then so what.
Really bad in the US. I suspect that Mueller would find that about 50-90 percent of bankers in Manhattan had committed a felony if they were subjected to the same scrutiny as Trump’s clan.
“We live in a reality TV world now”
Yes, but do our patent law blogs need to be saturated in this type of stuff?
If I want a “Jerry Springer” effect, I do not turn to “60 Minutes.”
Yes. And they should all go to jail for it. The solution is not to lessen the scrutiny of Trump and his kleptocratic minions, its to aim that same level of scrutiny to all the bankers.
For once Ordinary we agree. I would add all politicians too. Warren proposed legislation is a good start.
Can’t tell the difference, Paul? Can’t see the truth? A problem not confined to the USA. In England, a large proportion of the voters still cannot get their heads around the Russia-financed conspiracy that delivered a 52% vote in favour of leaving the EU. Most of those voters are seniors, BTW, as opposed to young adults.
Democracy is in peril. Autocrats are on the rise everywhere. Rule of law being cast into the trash can.
“Rule of law being cast into the trash can.”
I note the supreme irony as regards the people who do not appear to care at all about this in direct relation to patent law…
How ironic, my SeaSaddle was put in the trash can class.
The people that tell us that information has an ethereal form and that there is meaning to direct to an abstract idea don’t have a lot of room to talk.
Lemley is one of the leaders of the movement to end democracy.
Max, the meaning of democracy is majority rule. If a majority wants to do something stupid, and therefore stupid is done, that is not a failure of democracy.
It is when those in the minority say something like “That is stupid, we forbid it to be done!” and therefore it is not done that democracy fails.
Comments are closed.