Not quite a year after Frost Brown Todd (FBT) opened its office in Pittsburgh, the firm is ready to expand into a larger space and add a new lawyer to the Pittsburgh team.
“We have signed a lease with the Union Trust Building that will double our current square footage,” says Kevin Colosimo, FBT Pittsburgh Member-in-Charge. “We are currently working with architects to design the space. Construction will be underway shortly and we anticipate occupancy by the end of March,” he says. “We are very excited to be part of the rebirth of one of Pittsburgh’s great buildings.”
Colosimo leads the Pittsburgh team of 11 attorneys who moved into One PPG Place in January with a short 14-month lease. The plan is keeping with the firm’s strategy to diversify and grow its Pittsburgh office across practice areas, allowing an expansion of both transactional and litigation-related work in the local market.
“We have been well received in Pittsburgh in our first 10 months, and are pleased that client and practice opportunities are growing as expected. We are excited about our growth in Pittsburgh,” says John Crockett, FBT Chairman in Louisville, Kentucky.
As part of its strategy to diversify and add to existing capabilities locally, the firm has hired Douglas M. Hall, I.P. attorney and former partner at Pietragallo. Hall has more than 15 years of experience in all aspects of commercial litigation, with a focus in the area of intellectual property. He was part of the trial team that successfully litigated and licensed a family of patents in video display enhancement technology, achieving settlements and licenses with companies like Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Apple, Dell, Toshiba, Microsoft and Google. Hall was also member of the small team that achieved a multimillion-dollar willful patent infringement verdict against Thomson Corporation in the Western District of Pennsylvania. He currently also serves as a barrister in the Western District of Pennsylvania Intellectual Property Inn of Court and is a member of the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Law Association.
FBT’s Intellectual Property Law and Litigation practice group has more than 50 IP attorneys and other professionals spread out over 12 offices in eight states, many with technical backgrounds, and some who previously served as in-house counsel for companies like GE and P&G. The team has received recognition as one of the world’s top trademark groups in World Trademark Review 100, and as one of the top intellectual property practices in Ohio and Kentucky by Chambers USA®.
“Intellectual property law and litigation is a large and longstanding practice at FBT,” says Ann Schoen, Chair of the firm’s IP group. “Even though we are a general practice corporate law firm, we’ve had a strong presence and have successfully served clients in this arena for more than 35 years.”