Cochran Freund & Young

Firm Summary: Cochran Freund & Young LLC
Date: 2026-05-02

Cochran Freund & Young LLC is a Colorado-based intellectual property boutique firm with offices in Fort Collins, Denver, and Longmont. Founded in 2004, the firm provides a full range of IP services, including counseling, prosecution, and litigation. The founding partners, William W. Cochran, Samuel M. Freund, and James R. Young, bring extensive experience from prior roles in major law firms, corporations like Hewlett-Packard, and national research laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratory. The firm is a regional specialty shop and does not appear on AmLaw or other national BigLaw rankings.

The firm's litigation practice handles a variety of technology areas, drawing on the technical backgrounds of its attorneys in engineering, electronics, chemistry, physics, and computer hardware and software. The provided case data shows the firm representing patent holders as lead counsel. This plaintiff-side focus is further supported by the firm's public statements, which highlight representing smaller clients in litigation against major corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Glaxo Smith Kline. The single tracked case, Ledup Manufacturing Group Ltd v. Seasonal Specialties LLC, where the firm serves as lead counsel for the plaintiff, is consistent with this profile.

A notable outcome for the firm is its successful representation of Forney Industries before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the 2020 decision In re Forney Industries, Inc., the court reversed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), establishing that a color mark on product packaging can be inherently distinctive and registrable without proof of acquired distinctiveness. The firm's website and articles also indicate a practice that includes post-grant proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), though the volume of this practice is not detailed in public records.

The key partners and leaders of the litigation practice are the firm's founding members. William W. Cochran has over 50 years of experience in patent law, including serving as World-Wide Director of Intellectual Property Litigation at Hewlett-Packard and as a partner at Merchant & Gould. Samuel M. Freund is a Ph.D. and former Senior Patent Counsel at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and James R. Young was previously a partner at Faegre & Benson (now Faegre Drinker).