Clients in the News: Bell, Boyd & Lloyd
Chicago-Based Bell Loyd Opens in San Diego
February 19, 2008
By Pat Broderick
Daily Journal Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO - Another law firm has opened shop to tend to the burgeoning number of life science businesses.
On Wednesday, a dozen attorneys and technical specialists from Chicago-based Bell, Boyd & Lloyd moved into the new Gateway at Torrey Hills complex on Carmel Mountain Road.
They will offer corporate, patent procurement and patent portfolio management services to help emerging bioscience companies take their products to market and protect their intellectual property rights.
"I look at San Diego as another Boston, in the sense that there is a high amount of venture capital work, funded startup work and high-end science," said Mike Abernathy, chairman of Bell Boyd's intellectual property group in the firm's Chicago headquarters. "It's not mom and pop, in-the-garage-style business, but deeply funded. It is a very hot, dynamic market."
Leading the local team is Stephanie L. Seidman, a biotechnology patent attorney who defected from Fish & Richardson. Seidman will provide strategic counseling in the development and commercialization of patent portfolios affecting the biopharmaceutical industry.
"We also have corporate attorneys who will be working with our clients, because they almost always need IP protection," she said. "Sometimes, startups don't have any corporate attorneys, so it's a good match."
Seidman said San Diego also is a good match for Bell Boyd.
"There is always so much technology that comes out of the universities, Scripps and Salk, and incubators and new companies forming all the time," she said. "There are lots of opportunities. I like to be one of the ones to take a chance on those opportunities."
Although the focus will be on San Diego, Seidman said, the firm also has clients outside San Diego.
"I have clients as far away as France," she said. "We don't limit ourselves to any geographic area."
The competition for Bell Boyd is strong. It includes Fish & Richardson; Morrison & Foerster; Heller Ehrman; Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo; Goodwin Proctor; Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman; Latham & Watkins; and Procopio.
"We spent an awful lot of time looking at this market and the firms in it," Abernathy said. "And we spent an awful lot of time with Stephanie to ensure that she has what we were looking for and we had what she was looking for. It was a great courtship, and I think that it will be a great marriage."
Drew Woodmansee, partner in the patent litigation group in the San Diego office of Morrison & Foerster, said the additional competition is a healthy sign for the local legal market.
"We've seen a lot of law firms from other regions of the country moving into San Diego in the last few years due to the life science businesses in San Diego," Woodmansee said.
But he isn't worried about losing business.
"A lot of firms have moved here, and we have continued to grow despite that fact," he said.
John Phillips, managing principal of Fish & Richardson, expressed no concern about the new competitor.
"Fish wishes them the best. We've led the way, by establishing a beachhead here," Phillips said.
The firms compete for legal work among San Diego's 500 biotech, medical device, diagnostic and technology firms, which employ 36,600. The businesses' annual economic impact is $8.5 billion.
Among Fish & Richardson staffers who followed Seidman to Bell Boyd was Amy Mills, a part-time student at the University of San Diego School of Law and a registered patent agent, who works full time for the firm.
The local Bell Boyd team includes partner David A. Fisher, who formerly managed Fisher Thurber in San Diego and will lead the corporate and emerging company practice; associates Frank J. Miskiel, also from Fish & Richardson, and Cheryl A. Allaire, Gregory F. Brucia and Alidad Vakili, from Fisher Thurber; and seven technology specialists who are credentialed in molecular biology, immunology, organic chemistry and biochemistry.
Firmwide, the 265-attorney Bell Boyd, which also has an office in Washington, D.C., serves industrial and high-tech companies, financial institutions, service firms, government bodies, tax-exempt organizations and individuals.
Although the local office will be focusing on life sciences, Fisher said, it also will be involved in technology, investment banking, real estate, securities and mergers and acquisitions.
"We are not a patent boutique," Abernathy said. "We are a general practice firm."
He is eyeing the San Francisco area, where the firm could open an outpost similar to the one in San Diego.
"That's a competitive market and very well-served with a number of players," Abernathy said. "You have to be very careful in how you enter that market, just as we were in San Diego."
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