The Patent 1000 focuses exclusively on patent practice and has firmly established itself as the definitive 'go-to' resource for those seeking world-class legal patent expertise.
Bronze - Individuals: litigation
Fenwick & West has grown enormously in the past five to six years, and though still closely tied to the West Coast tech scene in people’s minds, it can no longer be accurately or fairly described as a Silicon Valley outfit; better placed than ever to service its clients’ global needs, it is expanding rapidly in New York, has formally announced expansion plans in DC and maintains an international bureau in Shanghai. Zooming in on the Big Apple, the growing local contingent has seven representatives in the IAM Patent 1000 for 2022, the newest among them being Carl Morales, who joined from Dechert in November 2021 to bolster an already robust life sciences practice. Morales has a chemistry PhD and is a leading expert in the area of small molecule drug patents, with a focus on patent procurement, portfolio management and strategic counselling. His counterpart on the high-technology side is Daniel Brownstone, a whiz at IP value creation whose software patents expertise is a boon to patrons such as Dropbox. Compelling options for life sciences entities in need of dynamic litigation support, meanwhile, include Jeffrey Oelke, Kevin McGann, Adam Gahtan and James Trainor. Oelke’s patrons include Novo Nordisk, which he is representing in Hatch-Waxman litigation against Sandoz, as the latter seeks to market a generic version of Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes treatment, Victoza; in this, success at the claim construction hearing has eased the path forwards. He can change tack smoothly and handle high-technology cases with dexterity – a skill also possessed by McGann, a quick study on any technology and a hard-hitting trial lawyer. Gahtan is the group’s resident appellate expert. Trainor is the go-to for UCB Biopharma, which he has been representing in a Hatch-Waxman case together with Robert Counihan, a rising star of the group who debuts in the listings this year alongside Ryan Johnson. Counihan has recently partnered up with Seattle-based David Tellekson to handle one of the first PTAB challenges to the validity of a patent in the emerging gene therapy field, acting for Passage Bio. He and Johnson have also been working alongside Oelke on the Novo Nordisk matter.