Hartford Business Journal

8 Hartford Business Journal • April 6, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Joe Cooper jcooper@hartfordbusiness.com W hen Hartford law firm Cantor Colburn LLP replaced Fox 61's tower signage at the Stilts Building a decade ago, staff commemorated the occasion with a grand unveiling and champagne toast. The celebration not only marked the firm's downtown debut, but also underscored its ascent from a small intellectual property boutique law firm to one of the country's largest and most productive legal patent and trademark outfits. "We thought it was a big deal to have a sign on a high-rise," co-man- aging partner Michael Cantor joked in his 22nd-floor corner office at 20 Church St. "We even have a book commemorating it." Today, the independently owned IP law firm still has the hands-on ap- proach of a small boutique with the capacity of an industry-leading patent legal practice employing more than 100 attorneys and 300 total staffers across offices in Hartford, Washing- ton, D.C., Detroit, Atlanta, Houston and South Korea. That's a significantly big- ger operation compared to the firm's three-attorney practice in the 1990s. Cantor and co-Managing Partner Phil Colburn at the time had big de- cisions to make amid industry con- solidation and the high-tech boom, while also succeeding the firm's se- nior partners. Together, they opted for an aggressive growth strategy to try to become a global brand work- ing with clients of all sizes. "At that time when we got into this field the best firms were in [Washington] D.C., New York City, San Francisco and Boston," said Cantor, who is married to West Hartford Mayor Shari Cantor. Steady growth in the last two-plus decades has transformed Cantor Colburn into one of the largest of more than 1,000 patent law firms nationally, both in terms of the num- ber of patent attorneys and patents issued annually, the partners say. Cantor Colburn provides patent and trademark services for a large portfolio of corporate giants in varying indus- tries, including United Technologies Corp., Ferrari, Samsung, NBC Uni- versal, Disney and Fox. It also serves clients as small as West Hartford gunmaker Colt to as big as Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. The firm's legal know-how in 2019 helped clients obtain thousands of utility and design patents and trade- mark registrations, ranking in the top 11 nationally in all three catego- ries, according to annual rankings by Denver's Oppedahl Patent Law Firm. Cantor and Colburn say the busi- ness has especially benefited from low overhead costs being headquar- tered in Hartford, home to two- thirds of its attorneys and most of its backroom operations. "We are an example of how you can not just exist in Hartford as a company, but thrive and grow, because the fact is, Boston and New York are so much more expensive to do business in," said Cantor, who is a major Hartford promoter, sitting on the boards of Connecticut Innova- tions and the Greater Hartford Arts Council. "There is also a quality of life in the suburbs here that many of our attorneys love. We have really grown using Hartford as part of that." Fearless mindset Cantor and Colburn say they never envisioned the more than 50-year-old firm growing to its cur- rent stature. But they both agreed years ago they needed to grow quickly to surpass general law prac- tices that had been beefing up their IP departments. The partners spent most of the 1990s "lawyering," handling every- thing from patent and trademark work to litigation and licensing. They also began to attend and participate in more international conferences and public-speaking engagements in countries like Korea and Japan as they grew their IP portfolio both in the U.S. and abroad. "You can never stop doing those things, you can lose a client tomor- row," Cantor said. "We felt burdened to bring in a new, nice vision of a global company that will make [attor- neys and clients] stay and be happy." As more clients rolled in, so did new hires. The firm at the time began to FOCUS: LAW As industry consolidates, Hartford's Cantor Colburn steadily becomes one of nation's largest IP law firms HBJ PHOTO | JOE COOPER Michael Cantor (left) and Phil Colburn have built Hartford's Cantor Colburn LLP into one of the country's largest IP law firms.

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