Maxwell “Mac” Fox tapped to lead IP boutique’s new Tokyo office
19 September 2023
Groombridge, Wu, Baughman & Stone, a patent litigation boutique launched a little more than nine months ago in New York and Washington, has opened an office in Tokyo to represent Japan-based clients with intellectual property disputes in the United States, led by prominent Japan-based U.S. patent litigator Maxwell “Mac” Fox.
Fox joins the firm from McDermott Will & Emery.
The new office, located in Tokyo’s Marunouchi business hub, will work closely with the firm’s U.S. offices to represent leading Japanese and East Asian companies in a broad spectrum of industries including life sciences/bio-pharma, electronics, automotive, chemicals, telecom and consumer products.
Groombridge Wu was formed late last November by four preeminent patent litigators who had previously worked together at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. The firm has grown to some 25 lawyers at its U.S. locations. To expand into one of the world’s key technology and innovation hubs the firm tapped Fox, a litigator with 25 years of experience handling complex cross-border IP disputes.
Fox has handled patent cases in District Courts throughout the United States, Section 337 actions before the International Trade Commission, and appeals to the Federal Circuit and to the United States Supreme Court. His matters have spanned the patent landscape, including telecommunications and network security, chemical compounds and manufacturing processes, imaging solutions, digital displays, medical devices and pharmaceutical innovations.
Fluent in Japanese, Fox has spent the last 17 years in Tokyo and is authorized as a Gaikokuho Jimu Bengoshi (Licensed Foreign Law Specialist)to advise companies there on U.S. law. He is a frequent lecturer on IP law, has spoken before the Japan Patent Attorneys Association and at Taiwan’s Chung Hwa Research Institute. He has also been a guest lecturer at Yamanashi University and Keio University Law School. He is a member of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association, the American Bar Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association, and has previously served as a master of the Tokyo IP American Inn of Court.
New York-based partner Nicholas Groombridge said: “We are excited to expand our global footprint and establish a presence in Japan. We have been committed to this critical market for many years, beginning long before we created our new firm. Groombridge Wu’s new Tokyo office and our partnership with Mac will grow and deepen our relationships with world-leading science and technology companies based in Japan and Asia, helping us meet the challenges and reduce the burdens they face in executing their global litigation strategies.”
Washington-based partner J. Steven Baughman, said: “I’m so fortunate to be Mac’s partner again. I can’t think of a better cornerstone for our firm in Tokyo. Mac is widely known and uniformly respected here, and his IP litigation experience is unmatched in this market.”
Fox said: “Having worked at large firms my entire career, the opportunity to join an elite boutique firm where I already know the leaders and have long relationships with my new colleagues is a unique pleasure. Groombridge Wu’s Tokyo office will focus on a single area of practice for which there is a great deal of demand. Our structure and size mean we can be flexible and yet retain capacity for growth. It’s tremendously exciting to join an endeavor like this at such an early stage, and even better with people you know and respect. I look forward to bringing what I know to helping Groombridge Wu grow in Japan.
