Durie Tangri LLP

Durie Tangri LLP's founding partners have, in many cases, known each other for more than 20 years, and most of them share a common personality trait: a healthy passion for debate.

"We all met each other through debate -- in many instances before law school," said co-founder Daralyn J. Durie.

"And we're all litigators at heart," she added. "We have way too much fun arguing with each other not to be litigators."

Durie said the idea of forming a litigation shop first blossomed while she and several of her colleagues studied at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Everyone seemed to agree then, however, that the timing was pretty poor. Fast forward several years and a substantial assemblage of legal experience, and January of 2009 became the right moment.

"You may remember that at the beginning of 2009, not everyone thought it was the optimum time to start a new business," Durie said, referring with a laugh to the onset of the Great Recession. "But we did."

"We were established enough that we had some confidence that we could do it," she added, "but still young and foolhardy enough to think it was a good idea."

Today, the just under 30-attorney firm frequently handles intellectual property litigation matters, and partner Clement S. Roberts pointed out that money is far from Durie Tangri's primary focus.

"While we are a for-profit entity, we are not a profit-maximizing entity," he explained.

"If you're always trying to raise your billing rate ... and raise how much money you make," he continued, "it crowds out the opportunity for lots of other things, like representing clients who are cool."

The firm has certainly represented big names, including Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc., Netflix Inc., Twitter Inc., Dropbox Inc., and Pinterest Inc., and while Roberts understandably attributes those prominent clients to Durie Tangri's roster of talented, experienced attorneys, he noted the firm's culture of personalized customer service has also been well received.

"My job is to take care of my customers and make them happy," he said. "If you think of yourself as some grand guru and that the client is lucky to have you, then you are absolutely going to get it wrong."

Durie got it right earlier this summer, winning a federal jury trial for French telecom giant Orange S.A. and clearing the company of a $60 million trade secret misappropriation claim brought by Bay Area startup Telesocial Inc. Telesocial v. Orange S.A., 14-CV03985 (N.D. Cal., filed Sept. 2, 2014).

Durie noted the classic trade secret example of Coca-Cola's clandestine formula was utilized early in the trial by plaintiff's attorney Edward J. DeFranco from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

"We never had access to the formula for Coca-Cola," Durie said, describing her counterargument on behalf of Orange. "What we had access to was a can of Coke. And what they were complaining about is the fact that we drank it. That's right, but that doesn't mean drinking a can of Coke is stealing the trade secret -- as opposed to breaking into someone's office and actually stealing the formula."

Roberts, meanwhile, successfully defended JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a lawsuit brought by Intellectual Ventures Management LLC, claiming dozens of products used by the bank infringed on patents covering various aspects of network security. Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. JP Morgan Chase & Co., 13-CV3777 (S.D. N.Y., filed Apr. 28, 2015).

"It was one of the first victories against Intellectual Ventures in its campaign against financial institutions," Roberts said. "Since then, there have been many, many others. But I think it showed everybody that you could, even in one of these lawsuits with more than 100 accused products, defend them in a concerted, coherent way, and I think it was the beginning of the end of Intellectual Ventures campaign against financial institutions."

Durie and Roberts were both quick to mention the firm's focus on teamwork, explaining that Durie Tangri attorneys don't think too highly of themselves.

"We share the ball to an uncommon degree," Roberts said. "We aspire to practice law the way the Brazilian soccer team plays soccer. ...They don't stick rigidly to positions but instead tend to use everybody on the team in an adaptive way that fits the situation rather than being strictly defined by roles."

-- Shane Nelson