Ryan Tyz

Tyz organizes his boutique’s practice not by areas of law, such as patent, trademark or antitrust.

Instead, he organizes it by clients’ industries, such as cybersecurity, video games and a new one, beauty and wellness. He works hard to learn from his clients about his clients.

“I want to be an expert in the industry that my clients are in and understand all of the legal issues they face unique to that industry,” he said. “And that includes all types of IP, consumer protection and other matters.”

He does take on clients outside his specialty fields, of course, such as defending a bike-mount maker accused of patent infringement.

“The only issue was whether there was an acute or right angle in the device,” he said. The case settled in December. National Products Inc. v. Northe Group, 20-CV00261, (D. Me., filed July 24, 2020).

In December, he also settled an action he filed seeking return of an inventors’ patents on sensor technology from a patent holding company.

It settled after Tyz added a racketeering cause of action. FTC-Forward Threat Control v. Dominion Harbor Group, 19-CV06590, (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 14, 2019).

Some of his more intriguing and fun cases come from the video game industry, for which he is co-counsel with game law expert Jennifer Kelly, his partner and wife.

In one unusual matter, they are defending Finnish game maker Supercell Oy from a potential class action alleging the “loot boxes” in its game amount to illegal gambling. Mai v. Supercell Oy, 20-CV05573 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 11, 2020).

Tyz said winning or buying the in-game prize boxes are no more gambling than buying a pack of baseball cards that may or may not contain the particular card desired.

He has applied one technique he learned from many of his clients to his own business. Most now pay a monthly subscription fee rather than an hourly rate.

Tyz has different subscription plans that provide different levels of service.

“We’ll handle a couple of litigations, third-party requests for information, IP counseling, dispute resolution, all for one monthly fee,” he said.

If a client’s needs go up or down, so can the subscription plan’s fee and services.

The system allows his firm “to really learn about our clients, their businesses, and their intellectual property … and the meter’s not running for us to do that,” he said.

— Don DeBenedictis