Knobbe Martens

Intellectual Property

Irvine

Los Angeles

San Francisco

San Diego

Louis Knobbe opened the firm in 1962; Don Martens joined a year later. In the 56 years since Knobbe Martens has grown to 252 attorneys and scientists. It passed the 25,000 patents issued landmark in 2014. There are offices in Irvine, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. A midtown Manhattan office opened in 2017.

Joseph S. Cianfrani, the chair of the firm's litigation practice, like a lot of Knobbe partners, has scientific degrees -- in his case, in electrical and computer engineering and electrical engineering -- along with his law degree. "Ninety-five percent of our attorneys have degrees in the hard sciences," he said. "I treat every case as if it were my invention at stake and my money being spent."

Cianfrani clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where patent cases are decided. He arrived at Knobbe as a summer associate in 1996 and went full time in 1998. Cianfrani said the firm's growth is achieved not through acquisition or lateral hires but by extensively training and investing in new associates with the expectation that each will become a contributing partner.

"Our number one focus is doing quality work for our clients," he said. "The firm's culture revolves around maintaining collegiality. We collaborate on cases in ways I haven't seen elsewhere. We don't worry about who gets the credit for what client -- removing those barriers results in our giving better service."

Clients include Edwards Lifesciences Corp., Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services LLC, Spectrum Brands Inc. and HTC America Inc.

A year ago, a Federal Circuit panel unanimously affirmed a $112 million win for Edwards Lifesciences' CardiAQ in a trade secrets case over a mitral valve implant that can be delivered to the heart by catheter rather than by open-heart surgery. The ruling upheld a $70 million jury damages award plus punitive damages and interest. CardiAQ Valve Technologies Inc. v. Neovasc Inc., 1:14-cv-12405 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 1, 2017).

Knobbe Martens partner John Sganga, who has litigated intellectual property and technology disputes for more than 30 years, was lead trial counsel for CardiAQ. He said the case was a good example of his firm's long-running commitment to client companies it often meets soon after they are born.

"We have a lot of clients we're working with from the time they're startups developing technology and brands," he noted. "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." For CardiAQ, Sganga established relationships early with the co-founders, an engineer and a cardiac surgeon. "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."

After Sganga filed the complaint against Neovasc but long before the case was over, Edwards Lifesciences acquired CardiAQ for $400 million. "You want to defend your IP, but litigation is a very big commitment," Sganga said. "We streamlined things to avoid distractions and to keep the client attractive as a takeover target. We pride ourselves on being adaptable to all kinds of services and strategies."

-- John Roemer