Ropes & Gray is splitting in Two With Roughly 100 Lawyers and Staffers Moving to New Spinoff

During the next few months, more than 100 attorneys and staff from Ropes & Gray will depart and join a new firm focused on patent prosecution the firm announced Tuesday. 

The as-yet-unnamed firm will be led by Joseph Guiliano, head of Ropes & Gray's intellectual property rights management practice group. It will focus on providing more cost-efficient patent prosecution than a full-service firm can provide.

According to Ropes & Gray chairman R. Bradford Malt, “Really what’s happening is that we are getting out the patent prosecution business and spinning out a new law firm that we believe will be positioned very well to do that with the right structure and overhead to best serve clients at a reasonable price.”

Guiliano joined Ropes & Gray in 2004 when the firm acquired the IP boutique Fish & Neave, where he began his career in patent law in 1991.