Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

Firm overview:

IP litigation is Quinn Emanuel’s largest practice area, and more than 80% of the firm’s IP cases involve patents. Coupled with Quinn Emanuel’s well-earned reputation for a robust approach to dispute resolution the firm is well known, and a respected opponent, in patent litigation. A client says they “thought of everything and anything that could come up”, and took a collaborative approach to the case, in which Quinn secured a “very nice, favourable” settlement for the company.

Quinn Emanuel’s cases are heard in venues throughout the US, including patent litigation hotbeds California, Texas, New Jersey, and Delaware. The firm has established a local presence in each area, and has opened offices in Austin and Dallas, alongside the Houston office. Quinn Emanuel has litigated in many different settings, including jury trials, bench trials, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations. The firm has also won many important patent cases both before and at trial.

Quinn Emanuel represents many of the world’s leading technology companies, both as plaintiffs and defendants, in their most important patent disputes. Internationally, Quinn Emanuel has the leading patent litigation practice in Germany, the second-most important venue after the US, for patent disputes globally.

Team overview:

Quinn Emanuel employs more than 250 experienced IP litigators, including 96 patent partners. More than 200 of the firm’s litigators are scientists or engineers, with client-relevant degrees and professional backgrounds, such as physics, chemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, bioethics, neurobiology and neuroscience.

The team has experience with a wide range of technologies, including computer architecture, enterprise and consumer software, network systems, high-power metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETS) and semiconductor fabrication processes.

Well established as a go-to patent litigator in Silicon Valley, partner Robert Stone has first-chaired trials for a roster of high-tech and well-known technology clients. His notable representations include acting as lead counsel for Voxer in a patent trial against Meta Platforms that resulted in a jury verdict of $174.5 million, and a final judgment of more than $200 million; the parties later reached a settlement.

Stone has also been called upon by one of the world’s biggest tech companies, IBM, for representation in multiple patent infringement actions.

Executive chairman and founding partner of Quinn Emanuel John Quinn has an almost unrivalled reputation as a litigator. In 2024, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in law for his contributions to the legal profession and global impact on business litigation by the Busan University of Foreign Studies in Korea.

Litigating complex technologies is a particular strength of Brice Lynch, of counsel in the firm’s Silicon Valley office. Notable matters he has been involved in include defending Samsung Electronics in an alleged patent infringement suit; representing IBM in a patent dispute; and representing BlackBerry as a plaintiff in a design patent, utility patent and trade dress infringement case.

A Quinn Emanuel partner since 2012, Michael Powell has considerable experience as lead and co-lead counsel in both state and federal courts, as well as in arbitration proceedings. Powell’s client list includes Google, Kraft Foods, MediaTek and Unilever.

Key matters:

• Regents of the University of California v Broad Institute, Case No. 22-1594, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ongoing

Quinn Emanuel represents the Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the President and Fellows of Harvard College in a dispute over who was first to invent a CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted an interference proceeding, and determined that the Broad Institute was the inventor. The University of California claims that the PTAB applied the wrong standard in determining when conception occurred, and that it used the CRISPR-Cas9 system well before the crowned patent owner did.

Due to the ubiquity of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, this case has high stakes and will have a broader impact on the industry.

• Splunk v Cribl et al, US District Court for the Northern District of California, 2024

Quinn Emanuel defended software startup Cribl and its chief executive officer in a bet-the-company litigation filed by a much larger big data platform company, Splunk, alleging patent and copyright infringement.

The firm obtained a complete dismissal, or entry of judgment, in the clients’ favour of the patent claims, claims brought under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), claims for tortious interference and unfair competition claims, and all claims asserted against the officer defendant individually.

Quinn Emanuel also obtained a district court decision, holding—based on a jury’s factual findings after a two-week trial—that Cribl’s uses of the plaintiff’s software for reverse-engineering, testing, and troubleshooting were protected as “fair use” under copyright law. The jury also held that any infringing activities or licence-breaching activities by Cribl warranted only nominal damages of $1 instead of the nearly $155 million that the plaintiff sought.

The Quinn Emmanuel team included Michael Zeller, Valerie Roddy, Tigran Guledjian, Christopher Mathews, and Sara Miller.

• Eolas Techs v Amazon.com et al, Case No. 23-1184, US Supreme Court, 2024

In October 2024 the US Supreme Court declined to reconsider a lower court’s ruling that a patent held by Eolas Technologies was invalid. The patent holding company had accused Amazon, Walmart and Google of infringing the patent, related to improved web browsing. Quinn Emanuel’s Deepa Acharya represented Google in the matter.

• Exact Sciences v Geneoscopy, US District Court for the District of Delaware, 2024

Quinn Emanuel represents Exact Sciences in patent litigation brought against Geneoscopy regarding cancer screening methods. In May 2024, a district judge denied in part Geneoscopy’s motion to dismiss the suit as well as dismissing Exact Sciences’ claim of infringement regarding a patent-in-suit, directing the company to file an amended complaint.

Clients:

ASM International, Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, California Institute of Technology, Cribl, Exact Sciences Corporation, Google, GoPro, Hyundai Motor Company, InAuth, Kia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Solatube, Wisk Aero.