Charles K. Verhoeven

Verhoeven leads Quinn Emanuel's offices in San Francisco and Redwood Shores and is co-chair of the firm's national intellectual property litigation practice.

In that role, he's often at the center of the next new thing in the technology world as Silicon Valley innovates and then litigates to protect its fresh ideas. "One hot new research and development area in biotech was invented over lunch by my client," he said, referring to the effort to manufacture synthetic DNA conceived by Emily Leproust and a colleague. The idea was to scrap the process of synthesizing genes on glass squares and instead use a silicon substrate that, Verhoeven said, revolutionized the field by enlisting photolithography technology borrowed from computer chip making.

Leproust co-founded and became CEO of South San Francisco-based Twist Bioscience Corp. Her breakthrough was quickly challenged as trade secrets theft by her former employer, Agilent Technologies Inc., which claimed she had made off with sensitive documents when she left to launch her startup. Leproust characterized the litigation as "an all-out legal assault on Twist." Agilent Technologies Inc. v. Twist Bioscience Corp., 16-cv-291137 (S. Clara Co. Super. Ct., filed Feb. 3, 2016).

Verhoeven called the suit a case of "sour grapes" by Agilent after it had given up on synthetic DNA and instructed Leproust to drop her research. "They hired lawyers and put a ton of resources behind an effort to try to kill Twist, to drive it into bankruptcy. But there was no merit to their case, zero."

At one point he wrote in a demurrer, "The deficiency in Agilent's [complaint] is yet more confirmation that Agilent brought this lawsuit in a bad faith attempt to harm Twist's business and reputation, while also seeking the unjustifiable windfall of cashing in on Defendants' hard work and innovations." Agilent, he said in December 2019, "has yet to sell a gene."

Added Verhoeven in an email: "Twist won challenge-after-challenge to Agilent's trade secret claims on the merits, resulting in an unprecedented discovery stay of over two years. After the stay lifted, Twist applied constant pressure to Agilent by demonstrating time and again that Agilent's claims were meritless. Ultimately on the eve of trial, in February 2020, Agilent agreed to settle all claims and counterclaims--with no admission of liability or wrongdoing and a full release of the claims made against Twist and other defendants."

Twist paid Agilent $22 million to achieve the deal. Verhoeven noted that when the settlement was announced in February 2020, "Twist's market cap rose 18 percent that week, crossing the $1.1B mark. And Twist's market cap is now $2.85 billion. So the market agreed this was a victory."

-- John Roemer