K&L Gates Bolsters IP Practice with Addition of Four-Lawyer Austin Team

Austin - Global law firm K&L Gates LLP continues its Texas growth with the addition of a four-lawyer intellectual property (IP) team to its Austin office. The three partners and one counsel join K&L Gates from Conley Rose, P.C., where one of the partners, Stewart Mesher, served as the chair of the firm’s highly ranked litigation practice group and the leader of its Austin office. Accompanying Mesher in the move are fellow partners Darlene Ghavimi and Henry Pogorzelski (who also practices from Houston) as well as counsel Adam Stegge.

“We are excited to have Stewart and his group join us at K&L Gates,” stated Jack Erskine, managing partner of K&L Gates’ Austin office. “The addition of this highly regarded intellectual property group is a major step forward for the Texas offices of K&L Gates as we continue to build out our capabilities to serve clients in Texas and beyond. With the technology and energy sectors continuing to grow in the state, K&L Gates is focused on enhancing our skill sets to reflect the direction of the Texas economy. This is another significant, but certainly not the last, step in achieving that goal.”

Together, the team represents clients on all manner of IP litigation and transactions; IP acquisition and portfolio management; counseling relating to patents, trademarks, copyrights, unfair competition, trade secrets, and domain name rights; and very substantial trademark prosecution and TTAB proceedings. This includes the litigation and resolution of contentious and complex patent and trademark disputes, as well as such related areas as discovery, motion practice, injunctions, and appeals, on behalf of both patent owners and accused infringers in federal courts and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). They advise clients in the software, electronics, life sciences, and other high technology and manufacturing industries on technologies that range from semiconductors to oilfield equipment, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, medical devices, and automotive and defense technologies.

In addition to its broad and extensive experience in private practice, the team also possesses a strong in-house and industry background, with, among others, Mesher having previously served as in-house counsel for Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Pogorzelski as a chemical engineer with Exxon Chemical Company, and Ghavimi as a scientific researcher at A.I. DuPont Nemours Children’s Hospital.

Bob Barrett, a Chicago partner and leader of K&L Gates’ global IP practice area, commented: “Despite already having approximately 200 lawyers in our IP group around the world, we feel it is important to be able to also offer our clients access to a full service IP group in Texas. The addition of Stewart and his team not only makes that possible, but does so with a premier practice that we expect will both greatly contribute to, and thrive as, part of our global platform.”

“We are delighted to welcome this experienced and talented team of IP attorneys, whose addition will benefit K&L Gates clients not only in Texas, but across the United States and around the world,” said K&L Gates’ Global Managing Partner James Segerdahl.

The team’s arrival follows other recent additions to K&L Gates’ Texas offices that have included construction and infrastructure partner Bart Turner and power partner Robert George in Houston and the five-lawyer energy team of Jeff King, Jamie Bryan, Chris Brown, Elizabeth Tiblets, and Mitchell Murphy in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston.

K&L Gates’ intellectual property litigation and prosecution practices serve clients around the world, protecting critical fundamental client assets, iconic brands, and proprietary information, as well as emerging technologies such as novel drug therapies and cloud services. With litigators on four continents devoted to patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret litigation, the group handles every scale of dispute, from large, complex multi-jurisdiction matters and bet-your-company confrontations between industry leaders, to litigation involving non-practicing entities, to modest license dispute and piracy matters.