Google Brings Juniper Lawyer In-House to Handle Patent Strategy
www.law.com/jsp/cc/...Lawyer_InHouse_to_Handle_Patent_Strategy
Google Inc. has hired another in-house patent expert as the search engine battles rivals in the ongoing smartphone patent wars.
Allen Lo, former associate counsel at Juniper Networks Inc., is starting a new job Monday as deputy general counsel at Google, he announced Wednesday while speaking at an IP conference at Stanford Law School. He'll be in charge of patent litigation and patent acquisitions.
Lo, who did not respond to requests for comment, will report to General Counsel Kent Walker. Google's head of patents and patent strategy, Michelle Lee, will remain at the company but will no longer directly oversee patent matters, according to a person familiar with the situation. Lee referred questions to a Google spokesman, who said the company would have no comment.
Lo joined Juniper Networks in 2000 as one of its first attorneys, and helped build and manage a team that developed its patent portfolio. Before moving in house at Juniper, Lo was a litigation associate at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner.
Lo also spent nearly three years as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office before deciding to attend Georgetown University Law Center in 1991.
Google has been spending a lot of money to defend its Android smartphone operating system against patent infringement claims. Rivals such as Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have slapped handset and tablet makers that use Android with dozens of patent infringement suits in federal courts and the International Trade Commission.
Oracle Corp. is suing Google directly in a closely watched case in the Northern District, claiming Android infringes its Java programming language. And like most tech companies these days, Google has also been hit with dozens of patent infringement suits filed by nonpracticing entities, according to court records.
Google is in the process of buying Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., largely for its patent portfolio, the company has said. It has also recently purchased patents from International Business Machines Corp.
This article originally appeared in The Recorder.
See also: "This Year's IP Strategy Appears to Be All-Out War," CorpCounsel, January 2012.