Denise M. De Mory

Denise M. De Mory is a co-founder and the managing partner of Bunsow De Mory LLP, a majority women-owned IP boutique. Over a 30-year career, she has tried 10 cases to verdict. Early on, she was a member of the U.S. Justice Department trial team that won a landmark antitrust case against Microsoft Corp.

The firm’s dozen lawyers specialize in plaintiff-side litigation in security, patent, intellectual property and trade secret matters.

“Managing our firm and serving as a lead trial lawyer are both jobs that I love,” she said. “I am fortunate to work with a committed, strategic, and nimble team that accomplishes great things for our clients with far fewer resources than the firms we go up against. As litigators, we handle some of the most challenging cases out there, and I am often hired at critical junctions in tough cases. Our team often takes on firms 50 times our size—and wins. It is very satisfying, and the combination of both roles is truly rewarding.”

Her firm represents universities, university professors and individual inventors in litigation against some of the world’s biggest tech companies. Over the past three years, De Mory originated nearly all the firm’s client work and has been instrumental in obtaining more than $75 million in settlements for clients.

In a major case for Agilent Technologies Inc., De Mory leads the client’s effort to enforce its CRISPR patents against a competitor seeking to invalidate them. The case is the first patent infringement action involving aspects of the science used to edit genes. The patents at issue involve chemical modifications to guide-RNA that are now regularly used in the industry and which greatly improve the efficiency and efficacy of the technology. Agilent Technologies Inc. v. Synthego Corp., 1:21-cv-01426 (D. Del., filed Oct. 6, 2021) and Synthego Corp v. Agilent Technologies Inc., 3:21- cv-07801 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 5, 2021).

De Mory declined to comment on the case, other than to note that her motion for a preliminary injunction is pending before U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila of San Jose and will likely be heard in June.

She represents Ramot, the technology transfer arm of Tel Aviv University, in patent litigation against Cisco Systems Inc. over coherent optical interconnect technologies in Cisco’s newest and highest speed networking projects. The sprawling case has spread to multiple forums; matters are pending in several. Ramot at Tel Aviv University Ltd. v. Cisco Systems Inc., 2:19-cv-00225 (E.D. Texas, filed June 12, 2019).

“I think every patent tells a story, and my favorite challenge is learning each asserted technology well enough to make the story of each patent accessible to courts and juries,” De Mory said.

– John Roemer