“It’s not right for companies to take what doesn’t belong to them,” says Gertrude Neumark Rothschild. “If you’re an individual- and especially if you’re a woman-companies tend not to take you seriously.”
They’re taking her seriously now. The white-haired 81-year-old physicist and Columbia University professor emerita began to realize about a dozen years ago that the giants of the electronics industry were infringing her patents on a process used in the production of lightemitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs). What’s more, she was certain that many companies knew they were infringing. She eventually found and hired Peter Toren and James Zirin, both partners at Sidley Austin at the time. In 2005 they filed four patent infringement suits in the federal district court in New York and succeeded in wresting substantial settlements-”totaling in the significant seven figures,” according to one of her lawyers-out of three of the companies: Toyoda Gosei Co., Osram GmbH, and Philips Lumileds Lighting Co. Toren (now at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman) and Zirin now represent Rothschild in the remaining pending suit against Cree Inc.
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