Trevor Cook to leave Bird & Bird for WilmerHale
After 39 years at the firm, IP litigator Trevor Cook (pictured) will be leaving UK-based Bird & Bird LLP to join Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in New York.
Cook will join WilmerHale’s IP litigation practice group as a partner on January 1, 2014, where he will concentrate his practice on IP litigation internationally.
Susan Murley, co-managing partner at WilmerHale, said: “Trevor is a highly-regarded practitioner who is uniquely positioned to strengthen our IP litigation practice group as we look to expand that practice outside of the US.”
Cook is a partner in Bird & Bird’s IP group and co-head of the firm’s international life sciences sector group.
Once president of the UK group of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property, Cook is now chairman of the British Copyright Council, and is also on the World Intellectual Property Organization’s list of arbitrators.
“Mr Cook’s extraordinary skill and experience will be invaluable to our clients as IP litigation increasingly takes on global dimensions,” Mark Selwyn, co-chair of WilmerHale’s IP litigation practice group, said.
Cook said: “I have found a new home in WilmerHale,” and added that he is looking forward to helping extend the firm’s presence in Europe and Asia.
He told WIPR that one of the immediate drivers for the move is personal, "but it coincided with a developing feeling on my part that the centre of gravity of the formation of IP strategy, or patent litigation strategy, has very much moved to the US, even when you’re talking about companies that are based outside the US".
“I’ve certainly felt some frustration on some occasions when I’ve found myself, as a European lawyer, implementing strategies I had no part in formulating," he added.
He was also attracted by WilmerHale's international arbitration practice. “In recent years we’ve certainly become more interested in and more convinced by the merits of arbitration as a way of resolving multinational IP disputes," he said.
