Don Martens outside of Knobbe Martens offices in 2004.

Don Martens, a founding partner of Orange County intellectual property firm Knobbe Martens, died Wednesday in Santa Ana, California. He was 85.

Martens helped grow Knobbe from a handful of lawyers in 1965 to more than 275 lawyers and scientists today. He was a partner at the firm for 40 years and spent another 10 mediating IP disputes before retiring in 2016. His leadership roles included president of the Orange County Bar Association, president of the American Intellectual Property Law Association, chairman of the American Bar Association's IP section, and president of the Orange County Intellectual Property Lawyers Association.

“Don was a giant in IP law circles for half a century,” Knobbe managing partner Steven Nataupsky said in an email sent to the firm. “He will always be a role model for the firm and all who knew him.”

Martens grew up in Darlington, Wisconsin, and earned a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Wisconsin. After serving as a lieutenant in the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps, Martens worked as a patent examiner while attending George Washington University Law School, where he graduated valedictorian.

He spent two years in the patent department at Standard Oil before joining what was then Fowler and Knobbe in 1965. Martens started the firm's litigation department, and with Louis Knobbe, Gordon Olson and Jim Bear remade the firm into Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear.

The four partners aimed to hire technically and legally skilled attorneys straight from law school, and to maintain a collaborative culture that helped keep them around through partnership and even entire careers. “We were four young lawyers who didn't know much about running law firms,” Martens told Managing IP for a 2016 feature it called “The Mad Men of IP.” “But we knew how we like to work and what would fit our lifestyle patterns.”

Back then patents were barely on the radar screen of general counsel and boards of directors “ didn't even know they existed,” Martens told Managing IP.

Knobbe partner Joseph Re said Friday that Martens was a big reason he and his wife relocated to California from the East Coast to join the firm in 1987. “Lucky for me, I got well over 20 years working with him, both at the firm and at the AIPLA,” Re said.

Besides growing the firm's profile beyond Southern California, Martens'  bar association work helped boost IP internationally. According to a 2004 University of Wisconsin article, Martens had lectured on patent law in Russia, China and seven other emerging market countries.

He is survived by his wife Jan, whom Nataupsky described as instrumental in Martens' leadership and client development roles, and by two daughters.

“Anyone who had the opportunity to work with Don experienced what an outstanding attorney he was,” Nataupsky wrote, “but more importantly he was an even better person of the highest character who helped establish the value system the firm continues to follow to this day.”