McDermott appoints eight IP partners to inaugurate in Austin

McDermott appoints eight IP partners to inaugurate in Austin

Kevin Meek, former Baker Botts IP head in Austin, will lead the new office.

To take-off in Austin, McDermott Will & Emery has appointed an intellectual property team of eight partners from Baker Botts to launch.

Kevin Meek, former head of Baker Botts' Austin IP department, will lead the new office, which will also include Syed Fareed, Stephen Hash, Paula Heyman, Brian Oaks, Margaret Sampson, Nick Schuneman, and Brett Thompsen. The team has extensive experience in global IP litigation and transactions in the technology, health, and life sciences industries. Amanda Jester, McDermott's Dallas-based healthcare partner, plans to relocate to Austin once the office opens.

"Starting a headquarters in the Western District of Texas allows people to take full advantage of the growth upsurge of patent case filings in Texas, as the highest portion of all district court intellectual property litigation cases are now filed in Texas," said William Gaede, head of McDermott's global IP practise group.

Working for Baker Botts for over three decades, Meek joins McDermott. He concentrates on patent litigation, intellectual property prosecution, IP licencing and trade secret litigation.

Fareed, a patent litigator, had been with Baker Botts for just around seven years before becoming a collaborator in 2019. He previously worked as an associate at Vinson & Elkins for nearly six years. Hash joined Baker Botts as well in 2015 after nearly working for 15 years at Vinson & Elkins. Hatch Waxman Act paragraph IV disputes was his primary practise focus and he has a technical background in life sciences. Sampson from Vinson & Elkins joined Baker Botts in 2015.

After working for 13 years at Baker Botts, Heyman joins the company. This is her second stint there after serving as senior counsel for Philip Morris International in-house from 2008 to 2009. She began working for the company in 2000. Thompsen returns to Baker Botts following a second term there. He previously joined in 2010 but left after a year to work as Timothy Dyk's law clerk on the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

While Schuneman worked there for 11 years after joining from F&B and Vinson & Elkins earlier, Oaks worked there for 24 years.

"We're concentrated on expansion throughout McDermott's IP, transactional, and litigation businesses, with parallel specialisation across the technology, health, and life sciences industries," said Michael Poulos, head of strategies at McDermott.

Ashurst also made intentions to launch in Austin public in June 2022 as the Anglo-Australian company looks for infrastructure project work in Texas.