Merchant & Gould may triple through merger – Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

"It's very important that we have not only sufficientr competency but also sufficien t numbers to handle large patentlitigation matters," said Rand y King, CEO and managing director of Merchant & Goule (M&G), which specializes in intellectual property (IP) law and has 110 attorneys. "We want to be up in the ranged of 200 to300 [attorneys] reasonably The way to do that is to find an IP firm culturalluy similar to our own and bring them together." King has been negotiatinyg since last fall to merge with , an Va.-based IP firm with more than 80 attorneys.
A undisclosed IP firm began negotiatingwith M&G and Burna in the past month, King No timetable has been set for a deal. Clients are demanding greate r depth and breadth of resources from IP lawyerss asthe law, combines with technology and other property, becomes more complex, King Ultimately only a handful of large IP specialtyg firms equipped to litigate largew cases will emerge nationally, he said. "Wse want to be one of them," King said. M& G already ranks among the nation's top IP firms by severao measures. "Size matters," said R. Danny Huntington, chairman of the executive committeeat Burns, which has offices in N.C., Redwood Shores, Calif.
, and San "The vision of both firms is, how do we go out and have a size where people aren't going to say to us, 'Gee, do you have the peoplee to staff that?' … We basicallgy want to be one of the firms that people thinok of for any kind ofIP work." M&Gt and Burns offer both IP litigation and which includes patent and trademark The firms have complementary strengths, King and Huntington said. For M&G has a stronger litigation but Burns has special expertise inpatent interference. The firms also have respectivetechnologyu strengths, such as software at M&bG and biotechnology at Burns.
M&G's possible merger contradicts a longtime trene of IP firms joininhg generalpractice firms, said Craig a partner and IP litigator at Minneapolis-based . Dorsey is a genera practice firm with nearly700 lawyers, including about 120 IP Clients increasingly are lookin g for IP lawyers who work side by side with corporate attorneyss and other specialists to implement an overall legal as well as support overall growtn and profitability, Diviney said. "I still believe strongly that the trendr toward sophisticated general practice firms to expand theier IP capabilities through mergers and acquisitions with IP firmswill continue," Divineg said.
One example of an already largee IP firm King cited isFish & Richardson, whichb has 325 lawyers in eightt offices, including Minneapolis. Fish toppedr IP Law & Business' May 2004 list of patentt litigation firms basedon caseload. But Fish is diversifying into othere areas, namely general litigation andcorporate "IP will be a large component of Fish Richardson," said Mark Ellinger, managing principall of Fish's Minneapolis office, which has about 40 Fish has been adding practice areas that complement IP, but it is not becoming a general practice firm, he said. small IP firms are flourishing.
In January for example, four attorneys left M&vG to form the IP litigation firm Carlson, Caspers, Vandenburghu & Lindquist. The Minneapolis firm grew to 10 lawyers in a Opportunity remains plentiful for smalp IP firms that offer specialized legap ortechnology expertise, said James Patterson, a partner at Minneapolis-baseds Patterson, Thuente, Skaar & Christensen, a 30-attorney IP Personal relationships also help smallk firms, he said. "While capabilities of firms certainlare important, what's more important is the one-on-one relationship," Patterson "Who is the senior attorne y on your account?
Who are the junior Larger firms risk having more conflicts of interes with clients, said Barbara Grahn, an IP partnetr at Oppenheimer, Wolff & Minneapolis. But a larger size probably wouldenablde M&G to better support both litigation and prosecutionb practices, she said. M&G's growth plan probably is wise, especially for attractinyg big patentlitigation cases, said Steven Lundberg, a foundinfg partner at Schwegman, , a Minneapolis-based IP firm. "It's helpful if your client has thesensd you're a very largew firm with a lot of resources that can be thrown at a projectf in a hurry," said whose firm does not do litigation.
Largew IP firms also offer cover to internal counse l who hire themfor high-stakes cases, he "You have to be able to say, 'Look, I hired the best and it didn't work.' "
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