After Eversheds Sutherland announced two weeks ago that it was opening a San Diego office with three intellectual property partners from Foley, they have arrived—along with two additional lawyers.

A five-lawyer IP team from Foley, led by partner Nick Pisano, joined Eversheds on Monday.  The other lawyers are partners Joe Patino and Chris Bolten and counsels Scott Penner and Justin Gray. Pisano’s longtime legal secretary, Nancy Johnson and paralegal Lilliy Montano, round out the team.

U.S. expansion is a top priority for Eversheds, the trans-Atlantic firm’s U.S. CEO Mark Wasserman told the Daily Report last month, after an initial focus on integrating the legacy firms.

Eversheds Sutherland formed in 2017 from the combination of U.K.-based Eversheds and Atlanta-based Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. The firm’s U.S. lawyers make up about 20% of its 2,800 lawyers globally in 69 offices.

The San Diego office is the second U.S. location that Eversheds has opened this year, following a Chicago outpost in May. That gives Eversheds eight U.S. locations. Besides Atlanta and Chicago, it has lawyers in Washington; New York; Houston; Austin, Texas; and Sacramento, California.

Pisano said Monday that he and his team made the move because of the firm’s global reach.

“Eversheds, with its huge international presence, is a boon,” he said, because his team has a global practice handling patent procurement and IP portfolio due diligence for medical device startups and venture capital firms and representing tech companies in IP litigation.

“Foley is a great firm with very good lawyers. I’ve enjoyed my time there,” Pisano said. “This is a different opportunity. For what I do, it’s a better platform.”

A lot of his team’s clients are in Europe and Asia, he explained, so moving to Eversheds adds IP capabilities for clients in those regions.

Eversheds has added a six-lawyer, China-focused IP team in Hong Kong and Singapore since the combination. The U.S. co-head of its IP department, Pete Pappas, told the Daily Report in July that the firm is “actively recruiting” more patent attorneys in Europe, particularly in Germany and the U.K.

The new IP team from Foley gives Eversheds a West Coast presence for its IP practice in the United States, and Pisano said that gives his team additional IP litigation opportunities for the firms’ global clients.

He declined to name clients, since they are still transitioning to Eversheds, but he has handled patent disputes for companies including EnteroMedics, Bridge Medical and Huawei Technologies.

Pisano has worked with his law partners Patino and Bolton for a decade, since the three were at Jones Day. The trio joined Foley’s San Diego office 6½ years ago, where they started working with Penner and Gray. “It’s an integrated team,” he said.

Pisano does both patent prosecution and IP litigation, and he said everyone who works with him is also trained to do both.

He and Bolton handle patent procurement for medical technology startup clients in the United States, the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Israel, he said, and they perform IP portfolio due diligence for European venture capital firms interested in investing in medical technology.

“It’s a whole ecosystem,” Pisano said, adding that a lot of their medical device clients are serial entrepreneurs.

Their venture capital clients tend to be European, he said. “European capital is more patient than U.S. capital,” he explained, noting that early-stage investments in medical device startups can take five to seven years to mature.

Patino, Penner and Gray focus on litigation, mainly for software, telecom and computer peripheral and medical device patents, but Pisano said they also handle general litigation.

“I’ve handled everything from nuclear fuel to shaving cream,” over his 30 years in practice, he said.