When John Desmarais left Kirkland & Ellis to launch his patent trial boutique Desmarais LLP last year, Bloomberg News headlined the New York–based litigator’s move this way: “Billion-Dollar Lawyer Desmarais Quits Firm to Troll for Patents.” On the surface, that take made sense. Shortly before departing Kirkland, Desmarais had launched a patent-licensing company, Round Rock Research, with a huge lot of patents acquired from one of his biggest clients, Micron Technology, Inc. The buzz within the patent bar was that Desmarais was switching sides, going from defending big companies in patent suits to representing the so-called trolls that drag those companies to court.

A review of court dockets and interviews with Desmarais and the ex-Kirkland lawyers who have joined him suggest that what he’s up to is more nuanced—and perhaps more strategically sound. Yes, Desmarais has gone into the patent-licensing business, brought some notable plaintiff-side cases, and taken the novel step of putting several “covenants not to sue” based on the Micron patents up for auction. But his new firm is also handling defense work for several of the blue-chip clients he represented while at Kirkland. And in some of those matters, his firm is working closely with Kirkland lawyers. Indeed, it appears that, through his law firm and Round Rock, Desmarais is trying to forge a new patent law paradigm, melding the entrepreneurial spirit of a plaintiffs shop with the stable client base of a large corporate firm. “There’s a couple of things about what we’re doing,” he says, “that are really unique and hopefully will break the mold a little bit on how firms operate.”

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