A little more than a year after folding his Palo Alto, California-based intellectual property boutique into Squire Patton Boggs, partner Ronald Fernando has reconstituted his old shop with several current and former colleagues.

The move came quietly a few months before Squire Patton Boggs recently absorbed Singularity, a Redwood City, California-based IP boutique led by partners Frank Bernstein, Vidya Bhakar and Ronald Lemieux. Squire Patton Boggs, formed through a merger in 2014, has been busy expanding in California in recent years. The global legal giant acquired San Francisco-based Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, a 55-lawyer litigation firm, in 2016.

In January 2017, Squire Patton Boggs acquired Fernando & Partners, Fernando's four-lawyer boutique. In a recent interview, Fernando said that his entire team, including former senior associates William “Bill” Higley and Jacob Smith, as well as associate Prateek Bhatnagar, chose to leave Squire Patton Boggs and return to a reborn Fernando & Partners in late April of this year.

Ronald Fernando

“The business relationship didn't work,” said Fernando, a former senior associate at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and associate at Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear. “This is just the reality of any business, sometimes business relationship works out, and sometimes [they don't].”

It was not the first time that business took an unexpected turn for Fernando. In 2013, he co-founded IP-focused boutique Fernando Hale & Chang along with his former Knobbe Martens colleagues Alan Hale and James Chang. After three years, the trio went their separate ways, with Hale and Chang forming Irvine, California-based Chang & Hale, while Fernando created Fernando & Partners. (Higley, a former partner at Fernando Hale & Chang, is now a partner at the revived Fernando & Partners after having been a senior associate at Squire Patton Boggs.)

Fernando said that his firm will continue with its former clients. Over the years, Fernando has worked with clients engaged in a variety of technologies, such as alternative energy, consumer electronics, e-commerce, medical devices, mobile communication systems and software.

In a statement, Squire Patton Boggs said that it and Fernando “decided to pursue separate paths,” and wished him and his colleagues well in the future.

“Movement in and out of large firms, such as ours, is commonplace,” a Squire Patton Boggs spokesman said. “As a general policy, we do not elaborate on individual departures.”

In addition to Fernando and his team, two other litigation and IP veterans have left Squire Patton Boggs' California operations this year for new ventures.

Former patent litigation partner Mark Lupkowski, who spent the past 14 years at Squire Patton Boggs and legacy firm Squire Sanders, has joined the RuyakCherian boutique formed by former Howrey chairman Robert Ruyak, while also operating his own Berkeley, California-based patent prosecution shop called Zhu Lupkowski with RuyakCherian partner Song Zhu. Gregory Morrow, a litigation partner at Squire Patton Boggs for nearly two years in Los Angeles, left the firm in December to become president, CEO and co-founder of a payment services startup called Devizo, also known as Badabing.io, while also running his own solo practice.

As for Squire Patton Boggs, which this summer resolved an IP dispute over its name in China, the global firm has continued to expand elsewhere. In June it launched a public policy practice in China, only a few months after opening an office in Atlanta following a raid on Dentons.