Cozen O’Connor has hired a quartet of IP litigators from Eversheds Sutherland and Buchalter ahead of a planned office launch in San Diego.
Eversheds partners Nicola Pisano and Scott Penner have joined the 900-lawyer firm alongside counsel Regis Worley, while Jose Patiño has moved over from Buchalter, where he was a shareholder. Pisano has joined Cozen O’Connor as a shareholder while the rest of the team are members at the firm.
The team will be based in the firm’s planned North County San Diego office, its second in San Diego after the base in the city’s downtown area it opened back in 1987. The firm did not give further details about the new office, though American Lawyer reported it plans to make inroads with North County’s biotech companies.
Michael Heller, Cozen O’Connor’s chairman and CEO, pointed to the incoming team’s experience advising on all aspects of patent, trademark, copyright, trade secrets and unfair competition matters.
“With prior backgrounds in industry and technology, Nick, Scott and Joe have decades of relevant IP experience, not only as lawyers, but as businesspeople who can help our clients uncover and develop sustainable business solutions,” Heller added.
Pisano has spent the past six years as a partner at Eversheds and before that was a partner at Foley & Lardner and Jones Day. He has served as trial counsel in more than 150 cases and lead counsel in more than 100, addressing patent, trade secret, trade dress and copyright issues in federal district courts throughout the US.
His clients include US-based and international start-up and early-stage companies developing patent portfolios in fields including medical devices, software and machine learning, wireless communications and network technologies.
Penner was also a partner at Eversheds for six years, before which he practised at Foley & Lardner. He brings a background in computer science and focuses on patent litigation to protect clients’ technological assets, ranging from medical devices to computer software and hardware designs. He also provides advice on contractual and portfolio management in the IP space.
For his part Patiño has spent the past two years at Buchalter, before which he worked with Pisano and Penner at Eversheds as a partner and led its San Diego office.
Patiño has had a 35-year career as a patent litigator, and has argued before the courts of more than 25 states, including before state and federal trial courts and their appellate arms. He has also argued before the International Trade Commission and has acted as a special IP counsel in the US bankruptcy court. His fields of expertise range from life sciences and medtech to mechanical and electrical disputes.
At Cozen the team will work as part of a 50-lawyer IP group that has a strong national reputation across litigation and strategic counselling. The group’s hire follows Cozen building its IP bench in Texas, one of the busiest patent litigation venues in the US, over the past year with the hire of litigators Bradley Liddle and Michael Pomeroy in Dallas from disputes boutique Carter Arnett.
Commenting on joining the firm, Pisano said: “While many firms are quietly narrowing their IP offerings, Cozen O’Connor continues to expand its IP department and its capabilities. Considering the resources we have at our disposal – and the importance of IP in today’s global business market – this is a good place to be.”
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