Adrian Pruetz, left, and her daughter Erica Van Loon. Photo: Jamie Rector

Veteran IP attorney Adrian Pruetz has retired from Glaser Weil Fink Howard Avchen & Shapiro, and two other members of the firm's IP department have joined the Los Angeles office of Lathrop Gage.

Pruetz was chairwoman of Glaser's IP department. Her 35-year career included stops at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Morrison & Foerster. Her daughter, Erica Van Loon, with whom she's practiced for 15 years, said Pruetz was vacationing in Europe and not immediately reachable. “She's planning to spend more time with my kids, my brother's kids and my dad,” she said.

Meanwhile, Van Loon and partner Andrew Choung have left Glaser Weil for Kansas City-based Lathrop. Van Loon was the head of Glaser's trademark, copyright and media practice. As of Friday the firm website was still spotlighting her recent win for the BBC in litigation over its “Dancing With the Stars” brand.

Choung was in charge of patents. He was part of a trial team along with Irell & Manella that obtained a $400 million infringement verdict in June for the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Choung persuaded the Patent Trial and Appeal Board not to review KAIST's patent.

Van Loon said she and Choung are excited to join a national firm with an established IP practice in technology centers such as Boston and Boulder. Lathrop “has a very deep IP bench,” she said. “It's just not anchored on the West Coast.”

And because the firm has its roots in the Midwest, Van Loon will have “some flexibility on rates, which really appeals to clients too.”

“We are fortunate to have Andrew and Erica join our Los Angeles office,” Lathrop's Nancy Sher Cohen, partner in charge of the office, said in a new release. “We continue to grow the L.A. office with high caliber attorneys.”

Van Loon said it will be different no longer practicing with Pruetz, “my No. 1 mentor my entire career.”

“It's gonna be a change for me,” she said, “but I feel like I'm in a very good place with Lathrop.”