July 22, 2026, 20:19 GMT | Comment As intellectual property disputes increasingly go global, successful outcomes could soon depend as much on cross-border coordination as courtroom advocacy.

Winston Taylor aims to deliver on both.

The transatlantic law firm, officially merged as of June 1, is betting that clients will derive substantial value from having a single legal team capable of managing IP-related issues, wherever they arise.

The need is most evident in patents, where pharmaceutical companies routinely defend the same products in parallel proceedings across the US and Europe and standard-essential patent (SEP) disputes play out in US district courts, the US International Trade Commission (USITC), the EU's Unified Patent Court (UPC), Germany, the UK, China and beyond.

But the same cross-border challenges are also cropping up in copyright, trade secret and trademark disputes, two Winston Taylor principals told MLex this week.

For IP-intensive businesses, “it’s a global game of chess,” Niri Shan, the firm's UK head of intellectual property, said. “You need to stay a few steps ahead of your opponent.” 

“People hire lawyers not to cover the road in front of them, but to see around the curves,” Brett Johnson, managing partner of Winston Taylor's Dallas office and co-chair of the firm's litigation department, agreed. “It is very difficult to see around the curves in today’s IP environment, unless you have that global reach.” 

— Missing piece —

Globalization in the legal services industry is not new.

Hogan & Hartson's merger with UK-based Lovells in 2010 created one of the first fully integrated transatlantic law firms, while London's Norton Rose combined with Texas-based Fulbright & Jaworski three years later. More recently, UK-based Ashurst agreed to merge with Seattle-founded Perkins Coie, while Hogan Lovells completed its combination with New York's Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft on July 1.

Unlike most of those mergers, however, IP has been front and center since the US's Winston & Strawn and Taylor Wessing's UK-led business, which includes the UK, Ireland, and the Middle East, announced the plan to join forces in December 2025.

Their respective partnerships approved the deal one month later by a wide margin.

“It’s quite unusual to have a merger where IP is one of the key drivers,” Shan noted, but “IP runs through the DNA of both our firms.”

To that end, Winston & Strawn has long been known for its US patent trial and appellate practice, securing a $1 billion jury verdict on behalf of Monsanto in infringement litigation against DuPont Co. in 2012. The case culminated in settlement, under which DuPont agreed to a technology licensing arrangement valued at a minimum of $1.75 billion.

The Chicago-headquartered firm's reputation, however, has been built largely on the defense side, securing notable victories for clients including Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices and Belkin International while building one of the country's busiest Section 337 practices before the USITC.

Taylor Wessing is a leading UPC firm — finishing second in the European Patent Litigators Association’s tally of distinct patents litigated during the court’s first two years — with an equally strong track record on trademarks, technology transactions and life sciences, including a UK Supreme Court win in 2019 for Mylan in litigation with Eli Lilly.

If the future of IP litigation lies not simply in winning cases but in connecting them, the combination arrives at the right moment. Together, the firms offer clients something neither could provide alone: a fully integrated platform spanning US district courts, the UK and the UPC.

“The fact that we didn’t have, under one roof, an ability to sue in Texas, for example, was a big missing piece of the puzzle. Now we've got that,” according to Shan, who started with Taylor Wessing in 1993. “Brett, I'm sure, would say the same thing about the UK and the UPC in the patent space [for Winston & Strawn].”

“I think the clients that we have, and the clients we're aiming for, expect their lawyers to not just be excellent in their own jurisdictions but to also take a global strategic view. You can't look at it in an isolated way,” Shan continued. “That's what is so exciting about this merger from an IP perspective.”

— ‘One phone call’ —

Cross-border patent enforcement is also on the rise.

Over a span of several months in 2011, the Apple-Samsung “smartphone wars” generated 19 lawsuits before 12 courts in nine countries, in one of the earliest examples of truly global IP litigation.

But that trend was unquestionably accelerated by the launch of the UPC in 2023. The centralized forum, capable of granting bloc-wide injunctive relief and with a speedier path to trial, has quickly become a key venue for multinational patent enforcement.

The UK, meanwhile, has seen an uptick in patent litigation following the Supreme Court's 2020 decision in Unwired Planet v. Huawei (see here), which confirmed UK courts’ ability to determine fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) royalties on a global basis.

In the US, case counts have largely rebounded from a dip in 2023, according to the 2025 Patent Litigation Report by Lex Machina, which reported a “record-breaking” $4.3 billion in patent damages awarded in 2024 (see here).

Against that backdrop, Shan and Johnson said today’s clients prioritize not only individual case outcomes but also that a cohesive, coherent legal strategy is being deployed on their behalf across all forums. They stressed that that need is not limited to patents, however.

Trade secrets have risen to the forefront as AI developers and other technology companies lock down what Johnson called the “crown jewels” — proprietary models, datasets and source code — without the public disclosure required by patenting. At the same time, Shan noted multinational employers are navigating worker mobility, cross-border data transfers and global workforces.

Similarly, copyright disputes over generative AI and trademark concerns held by globally marketed brands now often require advice which spans the US, UK and Europe, where legal standards continue to diverge.

“It is much easier and efficient to do that with one phone call than six,” Johnson explained. “You're going to get more consistent advice with a single team.”

— ‘Bet-the-company’ —

One of the first major post-merger tests of that model is already underway.

In March (see here), Dolby Video Compression LLC and Dolby International AB sued Snap Inc. for infringing four standard-essential patents relating to backend encoding and transcoding in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. An amended complaint in June added five additional patents and theories of infringement (see here).

More recently, however, Snap has gone on offense.

In a July 1 Winston Taylor-filed complaint, the social media company sought a UK court determination of FRAND terms for a license to Access Advance's multi-standard Video Distribution Patent (VDP) pool.

Meanwhile, in Delaware, a counterclaim by Snap — represented by, among others, Winston Taylor partner and former US Patent and Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal — accused Dolby and Access Advance of steering Snap toward VDP rather than offering it a bilateral license, as required by the patent policy of the International Telecommunication Union.

Long before the merger was announced, Taylor Wessing was already coordinating patent enforcement efforts for clients including Abbott, in UK-EU cross-border litigation over continuous glucose monitoring technology, and Pfizer, in a sprawling mRNA vaccine patent clash unfolding in the UK, several EU national courts and before the UPC.

Both disputes remain live, only now under the Winston Taylor banner.

Post-merger, the firm comprises more than 1,400 lawyers across 20 offices in eight countries, with annual revenue approaching $1.75 billion. It is investing heavily in IP talent, recently recruiting USITC practice leader Daniel Valencia and patent litigators Clayton Thompson, Carrie Williamson and Jake Zolotorev from DLA Piper, along with veteran Section 337 litigator Alexander Ott from McDermott Will & Emery.

For Johnson, success ultimately will not be measured by headcounts, but by whether Winston Taylor increasingly becomes the first call for clients facing “bet-the-company” intellectual property disputes.

“That is where we want to be as a firm,” he added, “on both sides of the ocean.”

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