Chadbourne loses more IP lawyers as Cooley poaches NY team
The New York office of Cooley has hired a group of IP lawyers from Chadbourne & Parke, including IP chief Walter Hanchuk and head of mobile technology John Kheit.
Hanchuk, the former chair of Chadbourne’s IP department, will head Cooley’s New York IP practice while Kheit will join as a partner with immediate effect. The appointments also see the US firm add around 15 of Chadbourne’s associates and support staff to its IP practice, according to a Cooley spokesperson.
The hires come after Chadbourne partner Scott Balber joined Cooley with his litigation team last month. Balber was previously the co‐chair of Chadbourne’s litigation practice and now serves as chair of Cooley’s financial services litigation arm.
Cooley has been looking to bolster its IP practice in New York for a number of years and has made several partner hires in the last 12 months, poaching life sciences-focused patent prosecutor Matthew Langer from Wilson Sonsini in August 2011 and IP litigator Joe Drayton from Kaye Scholer in June 2012.
Meanwhile, Chadbourne has lost a number of high-profile IP partners in New York. In February this year the firm’s co-chair of IP John Squires left the firm for Perkins Coie along with IP partner Dennis Hopkins and IP of counsel Charles Fish, while IP litigator John Hintz left for Haynes and Boone in August. The firm’s former IP head Joseph Calvaruso left for Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe’s New York office in 2008.
Cooley’s New York‐based CEO Joe Conroy said in a statement: “Walter and John have developed one of the premier IP transactional, litigation, and patent asset creation practices in New York. Their extensive experience in all phases of IP, including a particular expertise in financial services and software technologies, extends the reach of Cooley’s IP practice in New York and creates powerful synergies across our core IP and business technology practices across the firm.”
Chadbourne was not available for comment at the time of writing.
