Welcome to Skilled in the Art. I'm Law.com IP reporter Scott Graham. There's a lot going on in IP land, so let's get right to it:

• Kudelski Group veterans launch a defensive patent aggregator for video

• Quinn Emanuel Avoids Own Goal, Defeats DQ Motion in Soccer Trademark Dispute

• Plaintiff class says using "joint venture" label doesn't get Gilead around antitrust laws.

• Axinn, Kirkland and Akin Gump add lateral partners.

As always, you can email me your feedback and follow me on Twitter.

Joe Chernesky, left, and Ira Blumberg of VideoLabs Inc.

New Aggregator Focuses on (Really Big) Niche

Two veterans of Swiss content giant Kudelski Group have formed a defensive patent collective focused on technology that supports video.

That might sound a little niche-y. But only in the way "mobile" once sounded niche-y, says Joe Chernesky, CEO of VideoLabs. The company debuted last month with $10 million in financing from Soryn IP Group and Bardin Hill Investment Partners and membership from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Swisscom and, naturally, Kudelski.

Chernesky said VideoLabs will operate somewhat like RPX and AST. The goal is to buy up patents that pose a genuine threat to the dues-paying members of the collective, while offering strategy and analytics that will help defuse nuisance assertions. The company has already obtained video patents that originated with Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, Swisscom, 3Com, and HPE. Chernesky and senior VP for IP Bill Goldman had been running Kudelski's licensing program since 2012, closing licensing deals there worth more than $250 million (including one with RPX). Ira Blumberg, VideoLabs' VP for client strategy and services, was VP for IP at Lenovo, and has also handled licensing at Intellectual Ventures and Rambus.

"We learned a lot about video patents and were talking about this problem [of patent abuse] as we were finishing up our time at Kudelski the last couple of years," said Chernesky, who's also done licensing at IV, Boeing and Intel. "We want to serve the entire video ecosystem."

Chernesky says his team is already familiar with many of the more than 1 million patents that could potentially be in play, in terms of infringement, validity, enforceability and importance to the market. The goal, if VideoLabs can sign up enough members, is to buy up the patents that score high on that criteria in PTO codes H04H, H04L and HO4N, G06F, G06K and G06Q. There's a lot under that umbrella, ranging from TV and HDTV systems, to transmission and signaling protocols, to authentication, facial recognition, biometrics and gesture control, among many other technologies.

Chernesky and Blumberg believe that even technology giants like Apple, Google and Samsung, with all their resources, can still face challenges getting their arms around the deluge of licensing demands and litigation in the video space.

"We've seen companies like Apple and Google join LOT and join RPX,so we know they're looking for solutions," says Blumberg.

Chernesky stressed his company isn't looking to compete with other aggregators, only to add something more specialized. There are no current plans to file patent validity challenges at the PTAB, as Unified Patents does, though down the road VideoLabs could partner with someone like Unified by, for example, providing information from its prior art database, Chernesky said.

One of the challenges for patent aggregators has been free riders—companies that don't buy membership but benefit from dangerous patents being taken off the market. Chernesky said right now he's focused on adding members and isn't worried yet about free riders. But the company probably would sell its patents "eventually" after it's supplied licenses to all dues-paying members, he said. The bulk of any profits from such sales would go toward new purchases, to get other threatening patents off the market.

"We really, really want to help solve this problem" of abusive litigation, Chernesky said. "The cycle needs to be broken down, and we think we can do it."

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Quinn Blocks DQ Motion in Soccer Trademark Case

This item slipped through the cracks. But because I wrote a couple of times earlier this year about the U.S. Soccer Federation Foundation's attempt to disqualify Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan from its dust-up with the U.S. Soccer Federation, it's important to note that U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly has decided that Quinn can stay on the case.

The D.C.-based judge ruled last month that any prior trademark work Quinn partner Robert Raskopf might have performed years ago for the benefit of both entities was too insubstantial to trigger disqualification from the dispute over ownership of the marks.

Quinn's timesheets show that Raskopf didn't record any billable hours related to maintaining the disputed marks. "Rather, almost all the 34 hours Quinn Emanuel billed to the Foundation during this time were worked by a trademark paralegal, which suggests that its work was limited and did not involve the exchange of confidential information" or legal advice, Kelly wrote in a 14-page order.

The federation is the governing body of U.S. soccer. The foundation was formed in the 1990s to raise money for youth soccer. The parties have worked closely together in the past, but recently had a falling out over who controls marks such as the shooting ball logo combined with the words "U.S. Soccer Foundation."

The Foundation moved to disqualify Raskopf and Quinn Emanuel on the ground that they prosecuted and maintained some of the marks at issue in the case, even at times attesting to the PTO that U.S. Soccer was the owner. But Kelly found it was another Quinn partner, now deceased, who first registered the marks.

Kelly ruled that, even if Raskopf could be said to have an attorney-client relationship with the foundation, his work was limited to maintenance, and ownership of the marks is "discrete and isolatable" from maintenance.

If the case goes all the way to trial Raskopf could be called as a witness. "The Federation is free to renew its motion to disqualify Raskopf as trial counsel should this action proceed to trial," Kelly wrote.

Would a Joint Venture by Any Other Name Smell as Anticompetitive?

A putative class of health care consumers sued Gilead Sciences and other pharma companies last spring, charging them with unlawfully colluding to extend Gilead's patents on HIV medications. Gilead asked U.S. District Judge Edward Chen to dismiss the suit in September, accusing the plaintiffs of "pejorative characterizations and baseless conclusions."

Now the plaintiffs have filed their opposition, accusing Gilead and its partners of using the mere characterization of their collaboration agreements as joint ventures to get around antitrust laws. "On this record there is no bona fide joint venture," the plaintiffs argue in Oct. 18 opposition signed by Durie Tangri's Mark Lemley. "Even if there were, it would not require or justify agreements like those at issue here."

Durie Tangri and other firms alleged last spring that Gilead entered into collusive licensing deals with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Japan Tobacco and Johnson & Johnson to combine Gilead's HIV-fighting backbone medicine with the other companies' more recently patented compounds to create combination drugs that effectively add years to Gilead's patents. As part of the deals, each company agreed not to market or license generic versions of the others' individual drugs, which the plaintiffs allege unlawfully inflated the price and is "crippling this nation's ability to stop new HIV infections."

Gilead, which is represented by White & Case, says the deals are lawful joint ventures. Each partner agrees that the other cannot introduce an identical fixed-dose combination "to compete with the venture's product, cynically 'free riding' on the venture's regulatory and promotional activity," the company says.

The plaintiffs argue in their opposition that the use of "free ride" is a tell. "By this, they appear to mean that they feel they need more exclusivity than patent law gave them, and so they signed agreements to create their own exclusivity by agreeing not to compete," Lemley writes.

He further argues that there's no evidence that Gilead's "joint venture" with Bristol-Myers-Squibb had separate corporate status, a separate office, technical collaboration or separate employees. "Rather, what Gilead calls 'joint ventures' are little more than agreements not to use generics and to share profits," Lemley writes.

Also signing onto the opposition are attorneys from Hilliard & Shadowen; Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro; Radice Law Firm; and nine other firms.

IP Lateral–Axinn

Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider has added Paul Zeineddin from his eponymously named firm. Zeineddin has tried patent cases in district courts and the ITC, and has substantial experience licensing global wireless patent portfolios.

"We are thrilled that Paul will be joining us," Chad Landmon, chair of Axinn's IP group, said in a written statement. "His technological background and trial experience will enable us to expand our offerings in a critical market sector."

Zeineddin has previously done stints at Baker Botts, O'Melveny & Myers and other firms. He also oversaw patent litigation as senior IP counsel to Samsung Electronics for five years. Working in his own shop since 2012, Zeineddin has collaborated with large international firms on behalf of Samsung in patent disputes against Huawei, Ericsson, InterDigital, Nokia and Sharp in public and private tribunals around the world.

"After seven years with my own practice, it was going to take the right team to entice me back to a law firm," Zeineddin said. Axinn's IP group "presented the perfect opportunity for me to add value with my technological background to an impressive group of litigators."

Ellisen Turner, Kirkland & Ellis.

IP Lateral – Kirkland & Ellis

I reported Monday that Ellisen Turner is leaving Irell & Manella to join Kirkland & Ellis. He's the second former managing partner to leave Irell in the last two months (along with David Gindler, to Milbank), and the third in two years if you count Andrei Iancu's departure for the PTO.

It's clear that there's been some debate within Irell whether to continue on its own and grow organically or to partner up with a global firm. To its credit, the firm addressed this directly in a written statement Monday from Ben Hattenbach, a member of the firm's management committee:

"Several partners have departed the firm recently to focus on building practices at the Los Angeles offices of large, multi-national firms," he said. "Irell offers a very different model and platform than these global firms, remaining well-positioned to handle the most complex matters while staying small enough to be nimble and provide focused value to our clients with excellence at every level."

Andrew Holtman, left, and Brandon Rash of Akin Gump.

IP Laterals – Akin Gump

Another side of this coin is lawyers leaving IP-focused boutiques for general practice firms. My ALM colleague Patrick Smith notes that there's been plenty of debate as to whether a genuine exodus or just routine firm-hopping is under way.

In any event, another manifestation comes from Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, which lost Andrew Holtman and Brandon Rash this month to Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. "IP is an underlying component to most business, even though I only address it from a narrow standpoint," Holtman told Smith. "But now [at Akin] I get to see the application of IP from a broader spectrum."

Holtman has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics, and Rash was a technical engineer for a semiconductor manufacturer before entering the legal profession. Holtman had spent his entire 18-year career at Finnegan, and Rash nearly all of 13 years there. Both said it was time to move to a platform that could further their practice with a more global presence that would allow them to have greater exposure to all the areas in which IP is relevant.

That's all from Skilled in the Art today. I'll see you all again on Friday.