Lex Lumina appoints a ‘supernova’ of IP law
Stanford law professor joins startup in New York, bringing full IP, antitrust and internet law expertise to the young firm.
Boutique New York litigation firm Lex Lumina has appointed Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley as of counsel.
Lemley is the William H. Neukom professor of law at Stanford Law School and the director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology.
Prior to joining Lex Lumina, he was a co-founder of Durie Tangri and Lex Machina, a startup that provides litigation data and analytics to law firms, companies, courts, and policymakers. Durie Tangri merged this month with global law firm Morrison & Foerster, and Lex Machina was acquired by Lexis in December 2015.
“I’m delighted to be joining a team of the smartest lawyers I know, working to make IP law better,” said Lemley, who started in his new role on January 1.
Lex Lumina founding and managing member Rhett Millsaps added: “Mark is a supernova of IP law and one of the most accomplished lawyer-scholars in the US.
“He’s also one of the kindest and most ebullient people I know. We are deeply honoured that he’s chosen to join our firm, and we are over the moon that we and our clients now get to work closely with him across an array of matters.”
Lex Lumina founding member Chris Sprigman said: “Mark makes our uniquely capable firm even stronger. With Mark on board, we can offer clients unparalleled representation across all areas of IP, and in antitrust and competition law as well.
“It’s an incredibly exciting development that we couldn’t have imagined when we launched Lex Lumina less than two years ago.”
Career highlights
Lemley litigates and counsels clients in all areas of intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law. He has argued 30 federal appellate cases and numerous district court cases as well as before the California Supreme Court.
He has participated in more than three dozen cases in the US Supreme Court as counsel or amici. His client base, said Lex Lumina, is diverse, including Genentech, Dykes on Bikes, video game companies, artists, computer scientists, and “nearly every significant internet company”.
Lemley has attracted many accolades, including being named California Lawyer’s Attorney of the Year twice. He received the California State Bar’s inaugural IP Vanguard Award; won the 2018 World Technology Award for Law; and in 2017 he received the PJ Federico Award from the Patent and Trademark Office Society.
In earlier years, Lemley was named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum and Berkeley Law School’s Young Alumnus of the Year. He has been recognised as one of the top 50 litigators in the country under 45 and one of the 25 most influential people in IP by “American Lawyer”, and one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the nation by the “National Law Journal”.
He is the author of nine books and 201 articles, including the two-volume treatise “IP and Antitrust”. His works have been cited more than 300 times by courts, and more than 40,000 times in books and academic articles, making him the most-cited scholar in IP law and one of the ten most-cited legal scholars of all time.
Lemley has published nine of the 100 most-cited law review articles of the past 20 years, and a 2012 empirical study named him the most relevant law professor in the US. His articles have appeared in 24 of the top 25 law reviews, in Nature Biotechnology, in top economic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Review of Economics and Statistics, and in multiple peer-reviewed and specialty journals.
He has also taught IP law to federal and state judges; has testified eight times before Congress; and has filed more than 70 amicus briefs in the US Supreme Court and state and federal courts.
Lex Lumina was founded in 2021 by members Rhett Millsaps and NYU law professor Chris Sprigman, as well as UCLA law professor Mark Mckenna and Harvard law professor Rebecca Tushnet, who are of counsel to the firm.
University of Colorado law professor Kristelia García joined the firm as of counsel in 2022.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.
Today’s top stories
