Comments on: Darby & Darby Dissolving after 115 Years in Business

By: screwedbylaywer

screwedbylaywer — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:16:21 +0000

this firm has left many people hanging and did not do a very good job in serving their clients near the end at the very least.

By: Another Old Timer

Another Old Timer — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:08:24 +0000

I agree fully with what Old Timer writes: “Darby is folding for the same reason that all the other Bigtiques have folded. The money in this business is in litigation, not prep/pros.”
I was in contact with Darby & Darby way back in 1984, when it had its offices at the prestigious Chrysler Building in Manhattan. I was then a patent attorney for a European corporation that entered the US markets that year through a joint-venture deal with a big consumer electronics outfit in the US. Darby’s professionals helped us admirably in our search for possible patents infringements. I found their services helpful, while at the same time being very friendly and cordial. This old venerable IP boutique combined professionalism with a touch of warm personal service- a rare quality in present day mega-law firms, who are more interested in milking their clients with a $400+/hr rate, than in offering a warm human touch to the rather boring patents business.

With an ongoing boom and explosion of patents litigation in the US- especially in the mobile phones business – it is a pity that old established names like Darby & Darby are vanishing from the scene. One would expect that this boom in patents litigation would provide more work for patent lawyers with experience in that particular area. Darby really had experience in this area.

Or has the business of patents litigation become so large in volume, that such IP boutiques like Darby & Darby simply cannot compete with those big law PLLs that have 1000+ staff? Are law firms becoming some kind of “WalMart” department stores, that offer you everything you need in legal services but without that essential human and personal touch? What a pity!

By: OldTimer

OldTimer — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:59:28 +0000

Darby is folding for the same reason that all the other Bigtiques have folded. The money in this business is in litigation, not prep/pros. Their litigators have been leaving to go to big GP firms where they can build a bigger empire and make more money. Every time a litigator leaves the high-margin litigation part of the pie shrinks and the low-margin prosecution part of the pie grows. The last time I checked Darby had 40 some lawyers and 20 some patent agents. You can’t run a NY law firm with those kinds of numbers.

By: Jerry Stanton

Jerry Stanton — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:13:52 +0000

I’m not sure if I believe Darby was done in by competition from full service firms, which is the premise underlying Gene’s conclusion of the beginning of the end of the boutique patent firms catering to corporate patent work. I recall reading of a large and storied general practice firm in San Francisco that closed up shop last year. They’d gotten into the habit of taking a loan to pay bonuses and oeprating expenses at the beginning of their fiscal year, which in recent years took them 9+ months to pay off. As the economy tanked a few partners got cold feet and left, too many, which violated the terms of the loan. The bank called it in, even more partners left, the firm couldn’t pay and had no choice but to close their doors.
Now I have no idea whether Darby was so boneheaded as to pay bonuses out of a loan and my own bias is that a boutique patent firm is likely a bit more conservative cash-wise than the average large GP firm, but apparently partners have been leaving Darby over the past few years. The business of lawyering is relationship based and each partner has a good shot at taking his own clients and a few extras with them when they leave. A few of those defections and any firm would be in dire cash straights trying to manage high-dollar asssociate payroll while keeping some consistency for remaining clients.
Why those Darby parners left I think is the key to why Darby’s closed up. I’ve seen Darby’s NYC rates and they didn’t leave because they could bill much higher from the offices of a general practice firm. Maybe the GP firms saw it was easier to expand by pirating talent with thier own book of business from Darby than by organically growing it themselves, or maybe the defecting partners saw some writing on the wall early on. Whatever the reason, I think the evidence is not in to conclude that Darby is closing because corporate America/Europe wants one stop legal shopping.

By: old curmudgeon

old curmudgeon — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:07:43 +0000

It seems bizarre to have now outlived, just in the past few years, several of the most famous patent law firms of our patent law youth, the prestige leaders in IP litigation for so many generations. [Besides Darby & Darby, it has been Pennie & Edmonds; Fish & Neave; Morgan & Finnegan; and Kenyon & Kenyon, as I recall? All in NYC?]
[Of course many [but by no means all] former partners and associates have been absorbed into giant GP law firms [which no longer refer any client IP work out to specialized IP firms unless the clients do it themselves].
I believe that this is further exacerbating a great divide between PTO practice and patent litigation, in which fewer and fewer attorneys doing patent litigation seem to have ever had any working knowledge of what goes on in the PTO in obtaining patents, and don’t care as long as they can produce enough litigation billing hours to meet the ravenous billing demands needed to retain their jobs in those giant impersonal businesses of 1000 or more attorneys. This trend of patent litigation by those who have never practiced before the PTO or even the CAFC does always not bode well for clients who need, for example, reexaminations, reissues, Board appeals, CAFC appeals, etc. While, on the other hand, most of those now preparing and prosecuting patent applications these days have not had any direct litigation experience and too often lack appreciation of how their PTO work may affect their patents if they are ever litigated, and are now often [unlike litigators] under severe cost constraints precluding adequate training, supervision or review. Many of the patents now being obtained as cheaply as possible will never be infringed or otherwise be fit for litigation, except from conciencious senior members of low overhead small firms.

By: patent leather

patent leather — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:14:22 +0000

Those who previously predicted the demise of the small to mid sized IP boutiques were flat wrong. With companies cutting their legal budgets, the huge overhead at the big firms (both IP and general) means partners with billing rates of $400+. Darby & Darby is (was?) a great firm, but can they really write a better patent application than a competent lawyer at a smaller firm? My answer is, generally speaking, no. I already see lots of work being sent to smaller firms and I think the trend will continue.