Denise M. De Mory 

Denise M. De Mory is the co-founder and managing partner at Bunsow De Mory LLP, one of a small number of women who manage a majority women-owned IP litigation boutique.

Clients include Agilent Technologies, Inc., Theta IP LLC, Ramot at Tel Aviv University Ltd., Daedalus Blue LLC and ViaTechnologies Inc.

For Agilent, she is seeking to enforce patents related to genome editing in the first case asserting infringement of a CRISPR patent. “There’s a lot of controversy in the biospace over how broadly you can claim things. Agilent Technologies, Inc. v. Synthego Corp., 1:21-cv-01426 (D. Del., filed Oct. 6, 2021).

In a cutthroat legal realm, De Mory and her firm have passed a 10-year anniversary milestone. “Patent enforcement work is some of the toughest legal work out there; we regularly face firms 100 times our size and some of the biggest technology companies in the world,” she noted in a recent media statement. “And we succeed.”

This year so far, she boasts of having nabbed three trial lawyers from a leading Silicon Valley competitor, including two of its name partners, Elizabeth Day and Marc C. Belloli, plus partner Jerry D. Tice II, all formerly of Kramer Day Alberti Lim Tonkovich & Belloli.

“I’ve been very busy integrating and growing the firm,” she said. “We expect to add three to five more new lawyers by the end of the year.”

With three trials upcoming, she can use the help. In one major case, De Mory represents the inventors who, in the late 1990s, pioneered critical e-commerce tools for software licensing, management and enforcement. Its digital rights management patent is still in heavy use by many, including game developers and digital publishers.

“This is a historically very interesting case,” De Mory said. “After my client’s early success, a lot of big competitors rolled in in the 2000s.”

In the current case, De Mory’s plaintiff client, ViaTech Technologies Inc., claims that defendant Adobe Inc. infringes on its patent in Adobe’s protection technology products. ViaTech Technologies Inc. v. Adobe Inc., 19-cv-11177 (D. Del., filed May 24, 2019).

“I’ll be the lead for the plaintiff at the trial in Delaware,” De Mory said. “We’re in serious trial preparation right now. ViaTech involved three inventors who were very early into this space. One of them will be our lead witness, and we’re deciding which one and how best to tell their story.”

At stake are potential damages in eight figures. “But beyond the money, there’s much more to it than that. These are folks who are committed to this technology.”

De Mory said that collaborating with original inventors in this case and others is deeply satisfying. “It’s the most fun part of my work.”

— John Roemer