The law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP joined the List Project as a pilot partner in October 2010, taking on eight cases from the List. Weil, Gotshal & Manges has been assigned cases of Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries, as well as those still in Iraq.
Background on Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP:
Weil, Gotshal & Manges believes that a great law firm cannot become a great institution unless a pro bono ethic is part of the firm’s culture. It is in this spirit that the firm refers to time spent on pro bono work as “our finest hours.” The cornerstone of their pro bono practice is the firm’s ground-breaking pro bono policy. The policy includes the goal that every lawyer perform 50 hours of pro bono work each year; the expectation that every partner work on a pro bono matter every year; and the requirement that every new attorney – from first-year associate to lateral partner – take on a pro bono matter within his or her first two years at the firm.
Firmwide, Weil, Gotshal & Manges performed over 87,000 hours of pro bono work in 2006 – the equivalent of almost 50 full-time lawyers. In the US, the firm averaged almost 85 pro bono hours per lawyer, and in excess of 90% of the partners did pro bono work.
These extensive efforts spanned a broad array of matters, including civil, human and voting rights; political asylum; and community and economic development. They involved clients around the globe, from micro-entrepreneurs in Harlem to weavers in Varanasi, India. The firm’s pro bono work is the source of great satisfaction and pride, both to the individual lawyers who do it and to the firm as a whole.
Stephen D. Kahn, a Litigation Partner at Weil, is leading the firm’s team of attorneys in their work with the List Project. Mr. Kahn was instrumental in connecting the List Project with the firm. After nearly a year of discussions, the List Project is thrilled to be welcoming Weil, Gotshal & Manges as a partner. Mr. Kahn has practiced patent litigation and other areas of intellectual property law for more than 30 years, including the litigation of trade secret, copyright and trademark disputes and extensive counseling/transactional matters.
In the patent litigation arena, Mr. Kahn has litigated matters concerning electronic control systems, computer software, mechanical devices and manufacturing systems. On the counseling and transactional side, Mr. Kahn has had significant involvement in intellectual property and related issues arising in the context of the Internet, e-commerce and electronic signatures. He has also negotiated and drafted many computer software development and licensing agreements and outsourcing agreements covering all or parts of companies’ computer operations.
Mr. Kahn has been involved in new areas of patent law, focusing on patents involving financial services products and systems. In this regard, he was directly involved in a case entitled Mopex v. Chicago Stock Exchange et al., in which a patent allegedly covering a financial instrument and a process for trading such instrument was asserted against the Chicago Stock Exchange and many other defendants. In this case, the firm represented Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith.
In addition to his patent experience, Mr. Kahn has been extensively involved in the use of copyright and trade secret law to protect computer software and has litigated several cases in this area of law, including Computer Associates v. Altai in which the firm represented CA.
On the counseling and transactional side, Mr. Kahn has had significant involvement in intellectual property and related issues arising in the context of the Internet, e-commerce and electronic signatures. He has also negotiated and drafted many computer software development and licensing agreements and outsourcing agreements covering all or parts of companies’ computer operations.
Mr. Kahn taught a course entitled “Special Problems in Patent Law” as a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale Law School in 1997. He has lectured on computer software protection at Yale and at the Stanford Law School. Mr. Kahn has just completed a term as Chairman of the Committee on Information Technology Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He is the author of several articles on the subjects of intellectual property protection of computer software, negotiating and drafting agreements involving computer software and the Internet and privileged communications.
Mr. Kahn is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, a member of its AdHoc Subcommittee on Internet Access to Court Records and Past Chairman of its Committee on Information Technology Law. He is also a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.