Notable Successes

Desmarais LLP is a Law360 2018 Intellectual Property Group Of The Year. Law360 received more than 750 law firm submissions for the 2018 Practice Group Of The Year awards.
 
The firm notched several important victories in 2018, including winning an $82.5 million jury verdict for IBM, dismissing patent infringement claims of $100 million at the Federal Circuit for IBM, achieving a $400 million favorable settlement for Cisco Systems, and withstanding an appellate challenge to a prior summary judgment victory in a $75 million patent infringement lawsuit against Cisco.
 
Desmarais LLP represented IBM before the Federal Circuit, defeating Parallel Networks’s patent infringement claims of nearly $100 million related to patents describing web page generation requests. The Federal Circuit’s swift decision came less than two weeks after the firm presented oral argument. “It was a huge victory for us and IBM and saved the company a potential liability,” said John Desmarais, founding partner of Desmarais LLP, who also was named a Law360 Intellectual Property MVP for 2018.
 
Desmarais LLP also represented IBM at trial in Delaware federal court after Groupon declined to purchase a license for IBM’s patents that related to graphical user interfaces and e-commerce transactions. A federal jury found that Groupon willfully infringed all four patents and awarded IBM $82.5 million, and in October 2018, Groupon agreed to settle the case, paying approximately $57 million to license the patents. “It was very important for IBM from a licensing perspective to legitimate what it had been doing. It was a great victory for IBM,” Karim Oussayef, partner at Desmarais LLP, told Law360.
 
Desmarais LLP represented Cisco in a $400 million favorable settlement with Arista Networks that ended years-long litigation. Under the settlement, Arista dropped all claims that Cisco had engaged in anticompetitive practices for ethernet switches, and the companies agreed, with limited exceptions, not to bring new litigation over patents or copyrights for existing products for the next five years. The settlement also outlined a process for continued patent enforcement against any new Arista products that infringed on Cisco’s intellectual property.
 
Desmarais LLP successfully defended Cisco in a $75 million patent infringement suit brought by Straight Path IP Group, securing summary judgment of non-infringement less than four months after taking the case and successfully preserving that decision in front of the Federal Circuit.
 
Read the Law360 story