Novak Druce Connolly Bove & Quigg

I'll research this firm before writing the summary.

Novak Druce Connolly Bove + Quigg LLP — Firm overview. This was an IP-only boutique, not BigLaw. It was formed on January 1, 2013, when Houston-based Novak Druce + Quigg LLP (founded 2005 by six former Howrey partners) merged with Wilmington-based Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutz LLP. Headquarters were in Houston (1000 Louisiana St., 53rd Floor). At formation the firm reported roughly 120–140 attorneys, agents and technical advisors across Houston, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Cupertino/Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, West Palm Beach and Wilmington, Del. (a Philadelphia office opened and closed within about a year); by early 2016 it was down to about 80 lawyers. The combination was described in trade and legal press as the seventh-largest IP firm in the U.S. and an IP "super-boutique." Pre-merger, Novak Druce appeared on the National Law Journal's Midsize Hot List in 2011 and 2012, and Connolly Bove was ranked by Chambers USA as the top IP firm in Delaware for nine consecutive years. Critically, the firm no longer exists: in February–March 2016 Polsinelli PC absorbed 44 of its roughly 80 lawyers, including name partners Gregory V. Novak and Tracy Druce, and the Novak Druce partnership wound down amid creditor and unpaid-partner litigation (Citibank, a Wilmington landlord, and former nonequity partners).

IP litigation specialty. The firm's litigation identity came largely from the Connolly Bove side — a Delaware district court patent litigation and Hatch-Waxman/pharmaceutical practice — combined with Novak Druce's prosecution, reexamination and post-grant platform. Public attorney biographies and PTAB filings show work across chemical and pharmaceutical arts, electrical and computer engineering, software and business methods, cryptography and secure hardware, medical devices, mechanical arts, and consumer electronics/telecom. The one tracked matter, the Intellectual Ventures campaign against JPMorgan Chase, is a good illustration of the firm's litigation profile: computer-implemented and cryptographic-coprocessor patents asserted in the financial-services sector, litigated alongside parallel USPTO post-grant challenges.

Side preference. The tracked data show 1 plaintiff-side appearance and 0 defendant-side, with the firm as lead counsel. That sample is too small to support a strong claim of plaintiff-only orientation, and the firm's public record is genuinely two-sided: the pre-merger Connolly Bove was ranked 7th in the U.S. in total plaintiffs'-side patent cases in the 2012 Corporate Counsel Patent Litigation Survey, yet the merged firm also filed PTAB petitions on the petitioner/defendant side and litigated defense matters. The tracked appearance is best described as patent-owner enforcement work for a large patent-holding entity (Intellectual Ventures), not an operating-company defense practice.

Notable cases. The tracked case is Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. JP Morgan Chase & Co. et al. (listed as plaintiff-side, Henry A. Petri, Jr. as lead counsel). Public records tie the underlying dispute to IV's 2013 assertion of a five-patent portfolio against JPMorgan Chase in S.D.N.Y., No. 13-cv-03777. Note a naming discrepancy: the S.D.N.Y. docket is captioned Intellectual Ventures II LLC, and Petri and James P. Murphy are documented as patent-owner counsel in the related PTAB proceedings, not in every district court filing; I could not verify a separate docket captioned "Intellectual Ventures I" against JPMorgan Chase from open sources, so treat the entity name with caution. On the merits, the outcome was adverse to the plaintiff on several patents: Judge Hellerstein granted partial summary judgment of patent ineligibility under § 101 on April 28, 2015, dismissing the counts on the '694, '084 and '409 patents, with the '574 patent withdrawn by consent, leaving only the '666 patent in the case, which proceeded to summary-judgment briefing. Petri and Murphy also appeared for IV in the related CBMs (CBM2014-00028/00029/00030/00033, Bank of America and PNC v. IV). Other verified firm engagements include representing CalTech and Fluidigm as patent owners in IPR proceedings, and FieldComm Group as a petitioner.

PTAB / IPR practice. Post-grant work was arguably the firm's calling card. Trade press and firm statements described its "litigation-driven" patent reexamination practice as the largest in the country, and it maintained a dedicated Post-Grant/Reexamination Group. For scale: Docket Navigator data reported by Managing IP listed Novak Druce Connolly Bove + Quigg among the most active PTAB petitioners in the first half of 2015 with 7 filings, and Docket Navigator's 2014 Patent Litigation Report listed the firm with 17 patent cases that year. Because the firm dissolved in 2016, any current PTAB volume is attributable to successor firms (principally Polsinelli), not to Novak Druce.

Key partners. Henry A. "Hank" Petri, Jr. (Houston; ex-Howrey; the sole tracked lead counsel, later at Polsinelli) and James P. Murphy (Houston/San Francisco; led IPR work for CalTech, Fluidigm and Intellectual Ventures) are the most reliably documented patent litigators. On the management side, Gregory V. Novak was managing partner and CEO, and Q. Todd Dickinson — a former USPTO Director — was a partner at the firm before moving to Polsinelli; both are reported in mainstream legal press rather than firm marketing. I found no verifiable Am Law 100/200 ranking or revenue figure for the firm, and its former web domain is now operated by a successor entity (Novak Druce Carroll), so the profile above is drawn from contemporaneous reporting, court and PTAB filings, and pre-2016 firm announcements.