"[WilmerHale] ... regularly advises clients on antitrust matters related to IP law and is renowned for handling high-stakes disputes where the two disciplines overlap.”Chambers USA 2011

Our expertise in high technology markets enables WilmerHale to provide highly effective counsel to clients on issues at the intersection of the antitrust and intellectual property laws. We have more than 160 lawyers and patent agents with scientific or technical degrees, including more than 80 lawyers in all fields of technology.

We regularly counsel clients on a wide variety of antitrust issues related to intellectual property, including:

• Acquisitions of exclusive intellectual property rights that trigger Hart-Scott-Rodino filings.
• Antitrust implications of various intellectual property licensing arrangements, such as:
• Cross-licensing and pooling arrangements that integrate complementary technologies;
• Packaging licensing of multiple separate technologies; and
• Grantbacks that condition a license on the licensee’s grant of its license to improvements in the technology.
• Competitor collaborations involving significant intellectual property assets.
• The interplay between FDA/Hatch-Waxman law, intellectual property and antitrust, particularly in regard to disputes between branded and generic pharmaceutical manufacturers.

We also regularly represent clients in IP litigation matters raising antitrust issues. Our recent cases include:

• Represented Rambus in a precedent-setting case wherein the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruling that Rambus violated antitrust laws by failing to disclose its patent interests to a standard-setting organization.
• Representing Philips Electronics in an appeal to the Federal Circuit from an adverse decision of the International Trade Commission (ITC) holding that package licenses that include nonessential patents are a per se patent misuse tying arrangement.
• Obtaining a favorable verdict for Braintree Laboratories after a week-long trial on antitrust counterclaims stemming from a withdrawn patent infringement action.
• Representing Cephalon in the FTC’s Hatch Waxman lawsuit pending in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
• Representing Broadcom in multiple lawsuits against Qualcomm raising patent and antitrust issues. We achieved significant victories in the ITC, the Federal Circuit and the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.
• Representing Research in Motion (RIM) in its ongoing, multifaceted litigation with Motorola surrounding standards and licensing issues.
• Representing Red Hat in litigation seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement and damages for unfair competition as a result of public assertions that LINUX products infringe UNIX copyrights.