Orrick Beefs Up IP Ranks With Kenyon Hires

Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe has hired three intellectual property partners from Kenyon & Kenyon, adding to its team of 100 IP litigators worldwide.

At the same time, the move takes another piece out of Kenyon’s depleting roster of lawyers, which in November saw three other IP litigation partners join Shearman & Sterling. A number of other lawyers joined competitors throughout 2015 and the firm named a new managing partner in September.

The most recent departing group, which starts work at Orrick on Monday, consists of partners Richard DeLucia, Elizabeth Gardner and Antony Pfeffer. The group also includes Patrick Herman, who joins Orrick as of counsel.

In an interview, Gardner said that the group’s move had nothing to do with previous Kenyon departures, but that the lawyers found an opportunity at Orrick “that made good business sense.”

“Our move is certainly independent from other collections of partners who have left the firm,” said Gardner.

Instead, Gardner pointed to Orrick’s reputation in intellectual property. The firm won AmLaw IP Department of the Year and has a full docket of trials scheduled in 2016, including a retrial in Oracle’s copyright dispute with Google over unauthorized use of copyrighted Java code in the Android operating system.

“It’s also a multi-national firm,” Gardner noted. “It’s something we didn’t have at our prior firm. Orrick has offices around the world. A lot of our clients are overseas.”

Edward Colbert, the new managing partner of Kenyon & Kenyon, did not respond to a request for comment.