Ronald Lemieux

Squire Patton Boggs is once again expanding in Northern California.

The firm will announce Monday its acquisition of Singularity, a Redwood City, California-based intellectual property boutique led by partners Frank Bernstein, Vidya Bhakar and Ronald Lemieux.

The three partners, all of whom are well-known legal veterans in Silicon Valley, have joined the global legal giant's office in Palo Alto, California. For Lemieux and Bhakar, it is a homecoming of sorts, as both had previously practiced at Squire Patton Boggs legacy firm Squire Sanders.

“We choose Squire for a couple of reasons. One was familiarity, I was a former partner here,“ said Singularity managing partner Lemieux, who led the Palo Alto-based IP and litigation practice at Squire Sanders from 2000 to 2005, almost a decade before the firm merged with Patton Boggs to form its current iteration. “We have many good friends here, but it is also because Squire is well-situated for exactly what our clients need.”

A majority of the trio's clients are multinational electronic companies, said Lemieux, and as a global full-service firm, Squire Patton Boggs is able to address their clients' other needs, such as cybersecurity, real estate and a wide range of other legal issues.

Lemieux co-founded Singularity with Bhakar in March 2014. Prior to creating the boutique, Lemieux enjoyed a long career in Big Law, having spent nearly four years at Cooley, a firm he joined as a partner in 2010 from Paul Hastings, which hired him in 2005. Before that Lemieux spent almost five years at Squire Sanders, a firm he joined in mid-2000 after its acquisition of his former home, San Francisco-based Graham & James, where he was a partner and member of the latter's firmwide executive committee.

Frank Bernstein

Bernstein joined Singularity in late 2015 after more than a decade at Kenyon & Kenyon, where he served as managing partner of the IP-focused firm's Palo Alto office. (Andrews Kurth absorbed Kenyon & Kenyon the following year, and the combined firm, which merged with Hunton & Williams earlier this year, is now known as Hunton Andrews Kurth.)

Singularly has now wound down its operations due to the departure of its partners to the roughly 1,500-lawyer Squire Patton Boggs, while its other lawyers have gone on to in-house positions, Lemieux said.

“We have been working to expand our IP litigation practice—to provide greater critical mass and to bring in more people who are capable of first-chairing significant IP trial—and we also needed to do that in Silicon Valley,” said David Elkins, leader of Squire Patton Boggs' global intellectual property and technology practice. “Over the last several years, IP litigation has become, if not in greater demand than corporate [work], at least equal.”

Elkins said that Squire Patton Boggs has about 150 lawyers dedicated firmwide to IP work. In the Bay Area, the firm has 15 lawyers in Palo Alto and 70 lawyers in San Francisco.

In a statement, Linda Pfatteicher, managing partner of the San Francisco and Palo Alto offices at Squire Patton Boggs, said the firm looked forward to “working again with our former colleagues Ron and Vid and to welcome Frank. Their commitment to collaboration, cross-selling and a client-and-firm-first attitude match the values and culture that are central to our firm.”

Over the years, Lemieux has served as lead counsel in more than 200 IP cases, trying more than 20 jury and nonjury trials to a final judgment, as well as argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Vid Bhakar

Bernstein, on the other hand, has extensive experience trying cases before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in both pre-grant and post-grant patent matters, as well as substantial U.S. district court experience in all phases of patent litigation proceedings.

Bhakar focuses his practice on IP matters with an emphasis on patents and computer-related technologies. In addition to patent litigation, he has extensive experience in technology transactions and patent prosecution.

The new hires represent a wide range of technology clients. In addition to litigation matters, the trio has substantial experience negotiating technology license agreements, handling trademark transactions and prosecuting patents across several different industries.

The Singularity deal is the third in three years for Squire Patton Boggs in the Bay Area. In February 2016, the firm bolted on Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, a 55-lawyer litigation shop based in San Francisco. That move came nearly a year before Squire Patton Boggs acquired Fernando & Partners, a four-lawyer IP firm based in Palo Alto, although all of those lawyers would subsequently leave the Am Law 100 firm in April.