San Francisco Patent Law Forum

[MrProhibition]

What are the best firms in SF for patent law? I looked at chambers but they only have a California wide ranking, which lists firms that dominate in the south.

[Anonymous User]

bump..

[Anonymous User]

Cooley, Wilson, MoFo . . .

[Anonymous User]

Why are Cooley and Wilson so low in the California chambers rankings for patent law if they are the best firms? They are band 3 and 4 respectively.

[bk1]

Based on my limited research a few years ago Quinn, KVN, MoFo, durie tangri all seem to be well respected for patent lit in SF. A lot of firms in the Bay Area have decent sized patent lit departments even if they aren't regarded as a top firm for patent lit. I don't really know enough to say what's the best or what's definitively better than others.

[Hooch]

What are the best firms in SF for patent law? I looked at chambers but they only have a California wide ranking, which lists firms that dominate in the south.

Under the assumption you're asking because you're interested in working for a "top" IP firm in SF, and not because you have a burning desire to come up esoteric rankings for fun:

There's a lot more to take into consideration than Chambers rankings or vault rankings or whatever. If I were a rising 2L ranking firms for OCI, I would consider the following factors (not ranked in order of importance):

Are you willing to do NPE (i.e., "troll") work? There are some advantages: supposedly they staff their cases more leanly, so you can get more experience. And, sometimes, you can get paid far above market. But, there are downsides: you have to be okay with working for an NPE (not saying you should or shouldn't be okay with this, but it's something some people aren't comfortable with), Congress is always trying to put you out of business, and (as a guess--I have no personal knowledge of this) you might struggle to land in-house at companies you spent a lifetime suing.

Are you absolutely convinced you want to do patent work? Some firms tend to segregate their patent people off from their general litigators right from the start, whereas others tend to allow young associates to do both patent work and non-patent litigation. Again, no right or wrong answer, but you better be absolutely sure you want to do patent law before choosing a firm that segregates.

SF vs. Palo Alto: something you can figure out on your own, but you need to think about it.

What companies does the firm represent? Good luck transitioning to in-house at Samsung if you've worked in MoFo's patent litigation group, or vice-versa with Quinn/Apple. I suppose it's possible, ?maybe?, but people are more likely to transition into companies they've worked for. If you've always dreamed of working for MSFT, I'd suggest looking to see which firms often represent MSFT and which ones often are opposed to MSFT. Choose accordingly.

By "patent law" do you mean patent litigation or patent prosecution? Those are very different things and different firms might do well at one but not the other.

If you meant the latter... I suppose you should ask a law professor or another law student. Practicing attorneys probably aren't the most knowledgeable about such things, and we're all biased.

[lhanvt13]

What are the best firms in SF for patent law? I looked at chambers but they only have a California wide ranking, which lists firms that dominate in the south.

Under the assumption you're asking because you're interested in working for a "top" IP firm in SF, and not because you have a burning desire to come up esoteric rankings for fun:

There's a lot more to take into consideration than Chambers rankings or vault rankings or whatever. If I were a rising 2L ranking firms for OCI, I would consider the following factors (not ranked in order of importance):

Are you willing to do NPE (i.e., "troll") work? There are some advantages: supposedly they staff their cases more leanly, so you can get more experience. And, sometimes, you can get paid far above market. But, there are downsides: you have to be okay with working for an NPE (not saying you should or shouldn't be okay with this, but it's something some people aren't comfortable with), Congress is always trying to put you out of business, and (as a guess--I have no personal knowledge of this) you might struggle to land in-house at companies you spent a lifetime suing.

Are you absolutely convinced you want to do patent work? Some firms tend to segregate their patent people off from their general litigators right from the start, whereas others tend to allow young associates to do both patent work and non-patent litigation. Again, no right or wrong answer, but you better be absolutely sure you want to do patent law before choosing a firm that segregates.

SF vs. Palo Alto: something you can figure out on your own, but you need to think about it.

What companies does the firm represent? Good luck transitioning to in-house at Samsung if you've worked in MoFo's patent litigation group, or vice-versa with Quinn/Apple. I suppose it's possible, ?maybe?, but people are more likely to transition into companies they've worked for. If you've always dreamed of working for MSFT, I'd suggest looking to see which firms often represent MSFT and which ones often are opposed to MSFT. Choose accordingly.

By "patent law" do you mean patent litigation or patent prosecution? Those are very different things and different firms might do well at one but not the other.

If you meant the latter... I suppose you should ask a law professor or another law student. Practicing attorneys probably aren't the most knowledgeable about such things, and we're all biased.

Holy crap this was amazing! Thanks

[MrProhibition]

By "patent law" do you mean patent litigation or patent prosecution? Those are very different things and different firms might do well at one but not the other.

I didn't specify because I meant both. Some firms, in the beginning at least, let you work on both and those are the firms I want to hear about. Thus, this requirement takes out firms like Keker who only do litigation and open it up to firms like MoFo who do both. Curious about others in SF though like Cooley, Fenwick, Fish, Quinn, and WSGR.