Patent Law

Foliation

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Former patent office Commissioner Jon W. Dudas has found a home with Foley & Lardner. In apparently unrelated matters, former clients of Foley have filed suit against the firm. The complaint is that the firm failed to adequate represent their interests in a patent litigation, and overcharged them for the privilege. This new suit follows on another pending conflict-of-interest assertion, by Vaxiion Therapeutics, that charges Foley prosecuted its patents while also assisting its competitor, EnGeneIC.

DataTern, Amphion Innovations and FireStar Software filed suit last Thursday in the Eastern District of Texas against Foley for more than $1 million in damages. The suit alleges "Foley failed to fully and adequately represent plaintiffs' interests, failed to complete certain tasks while overbilling for other tasks that were unnecessary and otherwise failed to adequately prosecute plaintiffs' claims." The case inciting the grievance was a patent suit, asserting 6,101,502 against Red Hat, which settled.

Best wishes to Foley & Lardner in all their endeavors.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on February 02, 2009 (boomark / email).