americanlawyer.

com JANUARY 2010

special
issue

Q uinn Emanuel
This is our fifth biennial Litigation Department of the Year
competition. It has become a cliché to note that we’ve never had a
tougher time picking finalists and winners from the scores of submis-
sions. Nevertheless, it’s true. The last two years have been a time of
unprecedented upheaval for American businesses—and for the lawyers
who serve them. To quote a partner from one of our finalist firms, the
economic meltdown resulted not just in litigation, but in conflagra-
tion. The firms we chose in the overall contest and in the three prac-
tice area competitions—product liability, labor and employment, and
intellectual property—didn’t just survive this trial by fire. They were
forged into stronger, faster, smarter litigation departments.
As before, we invited every firm in The Am Law 200 to report on
litigation activities in a 19-month period, this time January 1, 2008–
July 31, 2009. Every submission was read by at least three American
Lawyer journalists. We vetted the strongest entries with calls to clients
and opposing counsel. Panels of reporters and editors picked finalists
in each category and invited those firms to our offices in New York to
plead their cases. At the end, we arrived at the results that follow: four
winners, 12 runners-up, and 24 honorable mentions. Congratulations
to all of them.  —Alison Frankel

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE M c GREGOR


What Rhymes with Win?
subject matters from a bevy of partners,
For Big-ticket IP litigation, the copy-
right infringement fight Quinn Emanuel
Urquhart Oliver & Hedges took on for client
Mattel, Inc., and its Barbie brand is hard to top.
The $100 million damages award that partners
John Quinn, William Price, and Michael Zeller
won at trial against Mattel rival MGA Entertain-
ment, Inc., in August 2008 grabbed headlines
(though probably not as many as it would have
if they had gotten the nearly $2 billion they
sought), but Quinn Emanuel IP litigation chair
Claude Stern prefers to tout something else. To
Stern, helping Mattel seize control of the Bratz
copyrights, design, and name is the kind of
“practical lawyering” the firm’s IP lawyers pride
themselves on delivering to clients. “Mattel/
Bratz is the new road map for what can happen,
if you make a misappropriation,” he says. (The
road map may be revised: At press time the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed
all equitable relief Mattel had won and told the
parties to try to settle the case via mediation.
Munger Tolles & Olson represented Mattel on
the appeal.)
The Barbie win is just one reason Quinn
Emanuel was able to rise above the competi-
tion in this year’s IP Litigation Department
of the Year contest. Yes, the other finalists
boasted solid results in big cases for major
clients. But none posted as many huge victo-
ries. The wins ranged across venues—from
the International Trade Commission to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Cir-
cuit, from the Eastern District of Texas to the
Northern District of California—and subject
matter—from cell phone and drug patents
With a string of eye-popping
victories across a wide swath of
Quinn Emanuel
put some distance between itself
and the rest of the field.
to football trademarks and, of course, doll copy-
rights. On top of all that, no other firm enjoyed so
many wins from so many different partners.
Take the casino gaming industry case in which
partners Charles Verhoeven and Amy Candido
earned a major win for client Bally Gaming,
Inc., in its patent battle with International Game
Technology. The litigation began in 2004, after
Bally introduced a bonus wheel–slot machine
that IGT claimed infringed patents related to
its Wheel of Fortune game—the industry’s most
popular machine for 13 straight years. Dubbed
“the Microsoft of the gaming industry” by the
trade press, IGT dominates the slot machine
market, especially for devices like the Wheel of
Fortune game that have a bonus wheel. That
dominance took a hit in October 2008, when
Bally won summary judgment on invalidity or
noninfringement on six of the patents at issue. In
P ractice G roup S ize  Partners: 86
 Associates: 125
 Counsel: 13
P ractice G roup  59%
as Percent of Firm
E stimated Percent  37%
of Firm Revenue 2009
O n the D ocket : Quinn is representing Google in
a trio of patent infringement suits set for trial in the
Eastern District of Texas over the next few months.
All three suits challenge the technology that underlies
the search giant’s Adwords advertising program. 
Quinn Emanuel
By Ross Todd
October 2009 the Federal Circuit affirmed that
decision per curiam.
Now, after bringing antitrust counterclaims
in response to IGT’s suit, Bally is in the plaintiff’s
seat. Its claims that IGT asserted invalid patents
to thwart competition got a boost when Quinn
found documents filed in a separate whistle-
blower suit between IGT and an ex-employee. “If
we are asked to do so by the client,” Stern says,
“we are able to be extremely aggressive on the
plaintiff side.” (The antitrust case is pending in
federal district court in Nevada.)
A team led by partner Harold Barza tapped
that aggression for Seiko Epson Corporation in
its bid to keep rivals from importing ink cartridges
that infringe its patents. A 2007 trial ended with
the ITC issuing an exclusion order that barred
more than 1,000 infringing cartridge models from
the United States. Some importers appealed the
order, but the Federal Circuit affirmed it in Janu-
ary 2009, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied the
importers’ cert petition in June. When the exclu-
sion order failed to stop the flow of infringing
cartridges into the country, Quinn brought an en-
forcement proceeding at the ITC on Epson’s
behalf. After a three-day trial last January, an
ITC administrative law judge recommended
that the agency impose a $20.5 million penalty
against Epson rival NineStar Technology Co.
Ltd. of China. (The full ITC later dropped the
fine to $11.1 million.)
Meanwhile, playing defense at the ITC
in February 2008, Verhoeven and company,
working with cocounsel Alston & Bird, helped
cellular handset maker Nokia Corporation
beat back an enforcement action brought by
cellular chip maker Qualcomm Incorporated. The
ITC win was part of a multinational patent licens-
ing battle between the two companies over cellu-
lar technology for which Quinn served as Nokia’s
worldwide coordinating counsel. With the compa-
nies reaching a confidential settlement on the eve
of trial in July 2008, and since both saw their stock
prices rise after the settlement was announced, it’s
hard to say who got the best of the deal. One way
to judge Quinn’s work on the matter: Qualcomm
has since hired the firm to handle other IP matters.
In California, Quinn helped Roche Molecu-
lar Systems, Inc., repel a Stanford University pat-
ent challenge to Roche’s HIV tests. Partner Brian
Cannon handled the case for Roche alongside for-
mer partner Adrian Pruetz, who later left Quinn
to start her own litigation boutique. After Stan-
ford filed suit in 2005 asserting three patents, San
Francisco federal district court judge Marilyn Pa-
Reprinted with permission from the January 2010 edition of the THE AMERICAN LAWYER © 2010 ALM Media Properties, LLC. The cover was modified for the sole use of Quinn Emanuel.
All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. For information, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com. # 001-01-10-05
tel ruled on summary judgment in May From left: second such transfer granted out of the
Edward DeFranco,
2008 that its claims were invalid because Michael Zeller, Eastern District. “The key to that victory
of obviousness. In September the Federal Claude Stern, is that [the Quinn lawyers] were persis-
Charles Verhoeven,
Circuit ruled that Stanford couldn’t es- tent in face of insurmountable odds,” says
Victoria Maroulis
tablish ownership of the patents at issue, Genentech’s vice president of intellectual
meaning that it didn’t have standing to sue in the property Gary Loeb (an ex-Quinn associate). Adds
first place. Verhoeven: “That’s one decision I’ve been involved
In another case closely watched by the patent bar, with that any patent lawyer worth their salt has read.”
the Federal Circuit granted Quinn a writ of manda- Indeed, one rival finalist in this competition referred
mus that allowed its client Genentech Inc., a Roche to the current Eastern District of Texas litigation cli-
subsidiary, and codefendant Biogen Idec Inc. to trans- mate as “the post-Genentech world.” (The underly-
fer a case brought by Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland ing case was still pending in California’s Northern
GMBH out of the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District District at press time.)
of Texas. Quinn sought the writ after federal district “Winning cases is important,” Stern says. “I
court judge Ron Clark denied Genentech’s motion don’t want to suggest otherwise.” Still, he views
to transfer. The Federal Circuit found in May 2009 those wins in grander terms: “We change the
that “the district court improperly used its central game for everybody.”
location as a consideration” and granted a transfer
to the Northern District of California—only the E-mail: rtodd@alm.com.