Welcome to Skilled in the Art. I'm Law.com IP reporter Scott Graham. So I've been there recently. I know how the loss of a parent can put stress on family dynamics. Knobbe Martens partner Joe Re and a couple of his 11 siblings recently shared their own experience with NPR's “This American Life.” You can listen to the 16-minute spot here—that's a photo of the Re clan with President Lyndon Johnson on the episode landing page. I've got some thoughts below. In other news, Facebook and Snap want to put BlackBerry's patent litigation on hold while they challenge its patents at the PTAB, but it doesn't sound as if U.S. District Judge George Wu is going to play ball. And I've got a couple of quick takeaways from my profile of Kirkland & Ellis' “Bionic Women.” As always you can email me your thoughts and follow me on Twitter.

This American Life's Ira Glass and Knobbe Martens' Joe Re.

Joe Re on Life in a Hyper-Achieving Family

I always knew Knobbe Martens partner Joe Re was a good IP trial lawyer. He does, after all, have multiple nine-figure jury verdicts to his credit.

After hearing a spot about his family on NPR's “This American Life” this weekend, I can now see he has some mediator chops as well.

Re is the eighth of 12 children from a high-achieving family—mother was an attorney and father served as the chief judge of the Court of International Trade. The passing of their parents in 2006 and 2017 led to some sibling rivalries over division of the estate, which included homes, engagement rings, family photographs and memorabilia.

It sounds as if Joe was the one everyone trusted to put together a complex auction system to divide the property equally—though that trust only extended to a point. When he offered to put 12 numbers on ping pong balls and videotape his 5-year-old neighbor picking each one to determine the order of selection, at least one sibling objected.

“I said, 'What do you want me to do, get Price Waterhouse like they do the academy awards?' He said, 'That would be a great idea.' So I literally got an accounting firm here in Orange County,” Re tells Ira Glass.

In the end, the auction goes smoothly. Re's sister gets a turkey platter that she prized because it was said to have come from the family of Robert F. Kennedy. Re got a pen that John F. Kennedy used to sign legislation.

It all leads Re to reflect on the source of the rivalries. “A lot of this just dealt with trying to get my parents' attention, affection and love, because my parents had so little time to give to each one of us,” Re says. Some of the children, for example, competed by learning facts about U.S. presidents. Challenged by Glass, Re demonstrates that he can still rattle off the names of the first 22 in seven seconds.

Re's father was competitive too. “He was always No. 1 in his class. He spoke five languages. He played seven instruments. … He was assistant secretary of state,” Re says. “So to measure up to an imposing parent like that, you're always going to feel inadequate.”

It's surprising to hear from a lawyer who's served as president of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and is in line to become president of AIPLA in 2020. But Re is philosophical about it. “That's the way it goes when you have great parents,” he tells Glass.

Facebook, Snap Try to Take BlackBerry on a Detour

Facebook and Snap are trying to put BlackBerry's patent infringement case on hold.

The social networks asked U.S. District Judge George Wu of Los Angeles to stay the suits, originally filed in March and April of last year, while they challenge the validity of all asserted claims at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Facebook and Snap waited almost the full year allowed by law to file a series of IPR petitions, and the PTAB won't decide until late summer and fall on whether to initiate proceedings. But timeliness shouldn't be an issue, says the stay motion signed by Cooley partner Heidi Keefe for Facebook and Paul Hastings partner Yar Chaikovsky for Snap. That's because BlackBerry no longer practices its patents, waited years to bring its lawsuit, and then took 10 months to narrow its asserted claims from an original 119 to a more manageable 48.

“The BlackBerry of today devotes most of its efforts towards filing patent lawsuits,” they write, based on patents it amassed “during its long-forgotten period of productivity.”

BlackBerry, meanwhile, is urging Wu to speed up proceedings in his court by scheduling a trial this December—long before the PTAB could be expected to conclusively resolve validity issues. “Defendants object on the basis that BlackBerry's proposal does not move slowly enough,” Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner James Asperger quips in a filing for BlackBerry.

BlackBerry is asserting patents related to, among other things, methods for generating cryptographic keys and pushing targeted content to mobile devices. Facebook and Snap claim the technology was widely known before BlackBerry sought the patents.

Other Central District judges including Andre Birotte, Philip Gutierrez, Virginia Phillips and Michael Fitzgerald have stayed cases ahead of PTAB institution decisions, Facebook and Snap point out.

Plus, “some of the costliest and most burdensome work” still lies ahead, including email production and deposition of “third party named inventors in foreign countries”—though in this case the foreign country most often is nearby Canada.

Wu set a hearing for May 20. But, he noted in a preliminary filing, “it is this Court's practice to deny motions to stay until after the PTAB has made a decision regarding whether it will actually institute an IPR.” In fact, even if proceedings are instituted there's no guarantee he'll stay the case, he said.

That means a trial date in December or early next year is looking likely. “The court prefers to set a trial date now, and finds [BlackBerry]'s proposal reasonable (particularly when no alternative proposal has been submitted by Defendants),” Wu wrote.

Parting Thoughts on Kirkland's 'Bionic Women'

A client calls them The Bionic Women. That's Kirkland & Ellis's copyright, trademark, internet and advertising group, which is made up mostly by women in a field that tends to be dominated by men. I profiled the group, led by partners Dale Cendali, Claudia Ray and Diana Torres, on Monday.

A couple of takeaways. One client said she was struck by the freedom the team's junior lawyers had to question the senior members' ideas, even in front of the client. Important note: The client saw this as a good thing.

“In the fervor of litigation, [Cendali] was willing to listen until the best idea bubbled up, and it wasn't always hers,” said Rachel Lamkin, who worked with Cendali's team when she was litigation chief for Otter Products LLC.

This created the sense that “she was thinking about us first,” as opposed to promoting Cendali's own notoriety, Lamkin says.

The other takeaway: Some firms are still bringing an all-male IP-team when pitching to women for prospective business. Cendali said she hears regularly from female in-house attorneys about this issue. “I can't believe it happens that much these days,” she says. “But in the past year I can think of multiple people who have made that comment. So it must happen more than you think.”

Duane Morris Adds Two in Silicon Valley

Duane Morris has picked up a couple of Silicon Valley veterans to boost its IP litigation practice, my ALM colleague Xiumei Dong reports.

Partners Terry Ahearn and Stuart Bartow were most recently co-managing partners of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie's Menlo Park office. Ahearn, whose practice includes commercial litigation, data privacy and cybersecurity, and Bartow, a patent and trade secret litigator, have worked together previously at McDermott Will & Emery, and when they were associates at the firm then known as Townsend and Townsend and Crew.

“We have complementary skills and have a good time working together. It just makes the practice more enjoyable,” Bartow said.

Now they'll be looking to grow Duane Morris' Silicon Valley office, which lost an eight-member IP team to Rimon last fall. “They are terrific additions to our firm and I look forward to working with Terry and Stuart to bring additional talented lawyers into our growing Silicon Valley office,” office managing partner Manita Rawat said in a written statement.