Denise De Mory

Intellectual Property Litigation

Redwood City

Denise M. De Mory is a co-founder and the managing partner at Bunsow De Mory LLP, a plaintiff-side intellectual property litigation boutique that is among the few in the industry that is majority woman-owned.

She opened the doors with law partner Henry C. Bunsow in 2012. Earlier, De Mory was a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP and at Howrey LLP, a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and an associate at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP and at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP.

De Mory said she came to the law through her skill as a computer programmer, beginning in the dot matrix era. She hoped to add legal and business acumen to her resume. "But I got to law school and took my first mock trial class, and I was sold on litigation. I followed that up with a patent-based mock trial class and I was fully sold. I have now been litigating patent cases for 30 years."

In September 2023, she obtained a nearly $43 million judgment for client ViaTech Technologies Inc. as lead counsel at a patent infringement trial in Delaware on claims that technologies used to control the licensing of more than 50 Adobe Inc. software products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, infringe a ViaTech patent. ViaTech Technologies Inc. v. Adobe Inc., 1:20-cv-00358 (D. Del., filed March 13, 2020).

"Our witnesses, including the ViaTech founder and one of the inventors of the patent in suit, shared their stories with the jury," De Mory said. "The jury heard from them a cohesive and compelling story about a small innovative company that invented important technology that Adobe was using without a license from ViaTech."

The verdict at the close of the four-day trial came in at $33.8 million -- exactly the amount De Mory asked the jury to award -- but prejudgment interest raised the final sum. The jury rejected Adobe's patent invalidity defenses.

In a current matter, BitMicro LLC has retained De Mory to lead enforcement of its patent portfolio that includes innovations in solid-state drives, memory controllers and integrated circuit technology.

As a result, she has filed patent infringement claims against Intel Corp. and Kioxia Corp. and its Kioxia America.

The Kioxia cases allege that the defendant infringed fundamental memory and integrated circuits. After the court adopted BitMicro's claim construction and forced Kioxia to produce worldwide sales data for the accused products, they settled on terms favorable to De Mory's client. BitMicro LLC v. Kioxia America, 6:23-cv-00461 (W.D. Tex., filed June 22, 2023); BitMicro v. Kioxia America, 6:23-cv-00335 (W.D. Tex., filed June 18, 2023).

The Intel case is in the early stages. BitMicro LLC v. Intel Corp., 5:23-cv-00625 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 13, 2023).

-- John Roemer