Denise De Mory

Over her 30-year career, Denise De Mory has both defended and challenged patents. What she enjoys most, however, is asserting her clients' patents against infringers.

"That's certainly the bulk of our practice," De Mory said of the firm she co-founded a dozen years ago. "I just find it to be more fun on the plaintiff's side. So, when the jury comes back ... the celebration is not over zero, the celebration is over a number, and it's exciting."

In September, she and her colleagues celebrated a very large number, $33.8 million, that a jury said Adobe should pay for infringing her client's digital-rights management patents, which Adobe used to check licenses for Photoshop and other applications.

The verdict was exactly the amount De Mory asked the jury to award, but with prejudgment interest, the final total could hit $45 million, she said. Posttrial motions are pending. ViaTech Technologies Inc. v. Adobe Inc., 1:20-cv-00358 (D. Del., March 13, 2020).

In early January, De Mory settled the last of three lawsuits filed in 2020 on behalf of the owner of a portfolio of cloud-computing patents. "All three of those [settlements] were very positive results for the client," she said.

The first two, against Oracle and Microsoft, settled within months. The third, against MicroStrategy, resolved just before trial after the judge rejected many defense motions. Daedalus Blue LLC v. MicroStrategy Inc., 2:20-cv-00551 (E.D. Va., filed Nov. 4, 2020).

The client had hired Bunsow De Mory to create and execute a patent enforcement campaign against major cloud computing vendors. "We're still working with that client on a number of issues," she said.

De Mory and her firm have also had great success in a yearslong series of lawsuits, appeals, PTAB proceedings and reexaminations against Cisco on behalf of Tel Aviv University, all over a portfolio of optical networking patents. The litigation is now consolidated in Delaware, and further appeals are proceeding. Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Ramot at Tel Aviv University Ltd., 1:22-cv-00674 (D. Del., filed May 24, 2022).

"We're just in a long battle to validate these professors' invention of this important networking technology," De Mory said.

In a potentially important case, she and Stanford's Mark Lemley are representing inventors of technology that allows CRISPR to work better in humans. "No one has really asserted CRISPR patents in litigation," De Mory said. Now on appeal, the case "presents some pretty interesting issues about ... biological inventions, which are inherently unpredictable." Synthego Corp. v. Agilent Technologies Inc., 5:21-cv-07801 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 5, 2021).

"We're sort of a small firm, but we have had a lot of success over the last several years," she said.

-- Don DeBenedictis