
At Willkie Farr & Gallagher, we pride ourselves on results, working collaboratively with our clients and each other to achieve pragmatic and successful outcomes, whether in high-stakes disputes or critical business opportunities. We represent U.S. and non-U.S. clients in litigation, transactions, counseling, licensing, and lobbying involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, domain names and trade secrets.
Our experience covers most industries and technologies, including pharmaceuticals, biologics, computer hardware and software, semiconductors, medical devices, consumer products, information and financial services, electronic devices, traditional and new media publishing, e-commerce, energy, sports, insurance, and music rights. Our capacity to handle transnational matters is enhanced by our offices in the European business centers of Paris, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Rome, and Brussels. We collaborate with our colleagues across all offices on matters involving antitrust, cybersecurity and privacy, energy, and other issues.

Patent Litigation and Other Adversarial Proceedings
Our patent trial lawyers have represented technology leaders in jury and non-jury cases in federal courts across the United States. We also regularly appear in other patent forums, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Our patent trial attorneys have experience handling cases in many different technical fields, in particular pharmaceuticals, biologics, computer software, electronics, and medical devices. In the pharmaceutical space, we represent patent holders as well as developers of biosimilar and generic drugs.
Copyrights, Trademarks, and Trade Secrets
We are routinely retained to handle complex copyright, trademark, and trade secret issues. We represent clients in cases involving trademark infringement and dilution, counterfeiting, cyber-squatting and false advertising. We handle oppositions and cancellations before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. We counsel clients on the strategic management and enforcement of their trademark portfolios in the United States and abroad. We negotiate and draft trademark licenses and naming rights agreements. Our copyright practice focuses on software, traditional and new media publishing, and broadcasting, and includes drafting and negotiating licenses and publishing agreements, and counseling clients concerning data use, rights clearance, and fair use issues. We also represent clients in copyright infringement litigation in federal courts. Our trade secret practice involves counseling clients on strategies to protect and defend their trade secrets, as well as representing clients in trade secret litigation under state law and the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016.
Licensing and Transactions
Our transactional work includes developing and implementing licensing strategies for patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets across a variety of technologies. Our licensing and transactional IP attorneys counsel clients on a wide spectrum of agreements, including those related to joint ventures, application development, outsourcing, R&D, licensing, and distribution to name a few. Our transactional experience includes the intellectual property aspects of mergers, acquisitions, divestments, initial public offerings, financings, securitizations, joint ventures and other monetizations.
We regularly counsel clients on the acquisition, maintenance and related strategies regarding domain name registrations. We have assisted clients in registering top-level and country top-level domain names in over 115 countries. Additionally, we have successfully prosecuted numerous ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) proceedings and civil actions to recover domain names in more than a dozen countries. Our practice also includes the negotiation and acquisition of strategic domains from third-party registrants.
Integrated Part of a Global, World-Class Firm
Our clients benefit not only from our superior legal skills and resources but from something more: when faced with mission-critical matters, we are “One Willkie” -- a firm that adapts into efficiently organized and collegial teams of attorneys who enjoy practicing together and combining their legal skills to best serve the comprehensive needs of our clients around the world. We bring to bear the full resources and experience of a general practice firm to handle our clients’ most challenging and complex matters. As one client, quoted in Chambers USA, put it, our team offers "tremendous strategic advice and a high caliber of legal skills" to clients seeking advice on IP issues.
For example, we regularly work with our antitrust attorneys when allegations of anticompetitive behavior are involved in patent litigation, settlements, or standards-setting; the deep resources provided by our general litigation attorneys enable us to staff efficiently cases of any level of complexity; our tax attorneys advise us concerning the U.S. and non-U.S. tax implications in structuring settlement agreements; our corporate attorneys provide unequalled capabilities in handling transactions; and our privacy attorneys provide advice on issues involving privacy and cybersecurity.
We routinely coordinate with counsel in Europe and elsewhere on matters that are litigated across multiple jurisdictions. For example, members of our IP team worked on a large multinational bankruptcy litigation, appearing at a joint trial between the U.S and Canada. We have deep relationships with top firms in London and Munich that excel in patent litigation. We know the importance of keeping all cases “on the same page,” while accounting for the different approaches that are required in different jurisdictions. We also call on our Willkie colleagues in our European offices for their insight in litigation, competition, and transactional issues. We have robust competition practices in our Paris and London offices that have worked on investigations and compliance issues in the pharmaceutical industry, including in the context of patent litigation settlements. The group also advises on competition issues that arise in transactions outside the litigation context, where pharmaceutical or other product rights are involved.