Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP

Fifty-five years ago, when Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP launched in Irvine, its founders foresaw the need for a focused intellectual property practice long before such a specialty became fashionable. "The firm has from Day One understood its clients' technology and business goals," said managing partner Steven J. Nataupsky, who like many of his colleagues has an engineering degree. He joined the firm in 1991 and has been at its helm since 2005.

In August the firm opened its eighth office, on New York City's Avenue of the Americas. Irvine partner Robert J. Roby moved east to head the new outpost. Nataupsky said Knobbe has an expanding client list in the New York area and its venture capital clients are investing more in East Coast startups. Knobbe's balance of patent litigation and patent prosecution work, combined with the ongoing tech boom, continues to spur growth, he added. The firm's other offices are in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Palo Alto, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Knobbe's roster of what it calls attorney/scientists stands at 270.

"We're seeing high demand for services for everything from computer software and hardware to RNA and DNA and nanotechnology," Nataupsky said. "There are just so many fields exploding with new technology and we are just here at the right time." He said that a strong support staff frees him to run the firm while still representing clients. "I do client work every day. I'd never want to give that up." Staying in close touch with tech clients from their incubation stage to maturity is a Knobbe tradition, said John Sganga, a veteran IP litigator. On Sept. 1, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a $112 million win for Sganga's medical device client CardiAQ Valve Technologies Inc. in its trade secrets misappropriation case against former service provider Neovasc Inc. The ruling upheld a $70 million jury damages award plus punitive damages and interest added by the judge post trial. CardiAQ Valve Technologies Inc. v. Neovasc Inc., 1:14-cv-12405 (D. Mass., filed June 6, 2014).

"We have a lot of clients we're working with from the time they're startups developing technology and brands," Sganga said. "Then as they mature and get into the marketplace, we handle the contested matters for them. We can cover the soup to nuts on whatever the issues are." CardiAQ was a good example. "The co-founders are an engineer and a cardiac surgeon who quit their day jobs and got together to invent a valve made of bovine tissue that would eliminate the need for open heart surgery," said Sganga, the chair of Knobbe's litigation practice group, who has known the men for years. "We began working with them when we handled their patent applications. And we wrote the demand letters to the opposite side when we learned they were using our technology."

Part of his work was strategizing, Sganga said. "You want to defend your IP, but litigation is a very big commitment. We streamlined things to avoid distractions and to keep the client attractive as a takeover target." It worked: mid-case, a major medical equipment company, Edwards Lifesciences Corp., acquired CardiAQ for $400 million. "We pride ourselves on being adaptable to all kinds of services and strategies," Sganga said.

-- John Roemer