Martin Belisario: Our firm is different from other IP law firms in that we kind of have big firm experience and little firm experience. We spun out of a large firm about 11 years ago, and we were all in the big firm for about 9 years. So we all have big firm experience. And we focused as a boutique just on IP. We don’t do anything else. It’s our specialty. We cover all the disciplines. We don’t have any gaps in our technological background.

We’ve got everything you possibly could want: electrical, mechanical. Our biotech department is extremely strong. So we separate ourselves from other firms by providing superior service and good quality results for the clients. We do very well at the patent office. Have a lot of former patent examiners. I’m a former patent examiner. And that kind of gives us an edge over a lot of other firms.

John D. Simmons: The firm in its present incantation, Panitch Schwarze Balisario & Nadel; actually spun out of a large law firm called Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. I joined the firm when they just joined Akin Gump. So it was a trend in the late ’90s for IP boutiques to join big law firms because they thought they would get litigation out of all of these patent prosecution and trademark prosecution clients.

What it turned out to be is the big firms really couldn’t afford the number of conflicts they would have with the amount of clients we had. So in 2008, this whole group spun out of Akin Gump and became the current Panitch Schwarze. So what I like to tell people is we’re lawyers with big firm experience, but you’re looking at IP boutique quality and pricing.