Google GC wants U.S patent reform, Dentons loses malpractice appeal, Troutman swipes privacy co-lead
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?? Good morning! In today's Legal File, Google's top lawyer calls for a complete revamp of the American patent system. Dentons couldn't convince a judge that the law firm's U.S. arm was wrongly disqualified for failing to disclose conflicts related to its Canadian counterpart. Can a former law firm partner's retirement funds be tapped into to help pay victims of a fraud he was found guilty of being involved in? Plus, Troutman Pepper has a new privacy co-chair as demand for lawyers in the practice group stays high. The weekend is almost here!
Google's general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado?in a company blog post?called for revamping the American patent system, sounding alarms over what she called a decline in the quality of U.S. patents and a rise in "shakedown campaigns" by so-called patent trolls.
She said Google supports a bill in Congress, introduced by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, to expand an administrative process for challenging patent validity at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office known as inter partes review.?
DeLaine Prado said the PTO, under its new director Kathi Vidal, should receive more resources to ensure it issues high-quality patents. She also advocated for higher filing fees for the biggest patent filers, including Google.
The blog post also backed a push to reduce what DeLaine Prado called "abusive forum-shopping" in patent-infringement cases, citing a?call?by the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's intellectual property subcommittee to address the "extreme concentration" of cases in U.S. District Judge Alan Albright's Waco, Texas, court.
Google faced more patent-infringement cases in the United States than any other company in 2020, according to a Lex Machina?report.
An Ohio appeals court said law firm Dentons cannot overturn a $32 million malpractice verdict stemming from its work in a patent case, finding the firm's U.S. arm was rightly disqualified for failing to disclose conflicts related to its Canadian counterpart.
The court rejected Dentons US's argument that it was completely separate from Dentons Canada, and?affirmed?that RevoLaze LLC lost millions of dollars from the firm's disqualification.
Dentons' "Swiss verein" structure, which treats branches in different countries as separate firms, is used by some of the world's largest law firms, including Baker & McKenzie, DLA Piper and Norton Rose Fulbright.
Appellate judge Emanuella Groves said Dentons' verein structure, "with a common conflicts base, that shares client confidential information throughout the organization" was "irreconcilable with Dentons US' contention that it was separate from Dentons Canada."
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An attorney for convicted former law partner Evan Greebel urged the 2nd Circuit to block federal prosecutors from taking his client's retirement account funds to help pay more than $10.4 million owed to victims of a fraud scheme involving ex-pharma executive Martin Shkreli.
Greebel's lawyer, Reed Brodsky of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued that retirement accounts associated with his work at Katten Muchin Rosenman, where he had been a partner until 2015, and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson should be off-limits from the government.
A jury found Greebel guilty in 2017 in a conspiracy with Shkreli to dupe investors in Shkreli's company Retrophin Inc. Greebel was then a partner at Katten Muchin and served as outside counsel to Retrophin. He was?sentenced?to 18 months in prison for helping Shkreli, and sentenced to seven years for related charges.
Greebel's "entire future safety net for him and his family is at stake."
Brodsky argued his client doesn't meet plan requirements to immediately withdraw the funds to pay for the victims' restitution. He also said that even if the government could reach the accounts, there's a 25% garnishment cap based on the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act.
Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders hired Jim Koenig to co-lead its privacy and cybersecurity practice from Fenwick & West, where he held the same role.
He is the latest privacy lawyer to join Troutman Pepper after the firm hired healthcare data privacy partner Jonathan Ishee from McGuireWoods earlier this month.
Going forward, he said there are plans to continue hiring for the practice, including people who have experience working in-house with companies, to be able to combine legal and industry knowledge.
Privacy and cybersecurity lawyers have been in high demand in the past few years as both large and emerging companies grapple with an evolving legal and regulatory landscape, and consider new ways to use data and technology.
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