Sweet Spot in Spokane
Photograph by Rajah Bose
Though home to several technology firms, Spokane is light-years away from being a Silicon Valley or a North Carolina Research Triangle or a Boston Route 128. But Washington state’s second-largest city does have something those hotbeds of intellectual property do not have: the nation’s No. 1 patent law firm overall in all industries. Far from the nation’s biggest tech centers, Lee & Hayes has built a patent law powerhouse with nearly 40 lawyers serving clients such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, T-Mobile and General Electric.
Lee & Hayes is based in Spokane because co-founders Lewis Lee and Dan Hayes, both electrical engineers with software experience, were raised in eastern Washington. When they decided, after working at a small local law firm, to launch their own patent law practice in 1994, they didn’t want to leave the Spokane area. Yes, Lee says, “It was the end of the earth for patents.” But that didn’t deter them.
Location hasn’t been a liability because of several strategies—most important, the firm’s approach to patents. Many boutique patent firms focus mostly on the law. Lee & Hayes’ focus is broader, extending to include how a client’s patents fit into its overall business strategy. When drafting the claims on which a patent will be based, the firm considers not just the need to protect the patent holder; it also factors in clients’ and competitors’ business strategies, both present and future. “The sweet spot for our firm is the intersection of business, law and technology,” Lee explains.
Consistent with this approach, Lee & Hayes limits its client base primarily to a select group of companies that have a leading position in the marketplace. (The firm’s customers develop technologies, products and services for many different fields, including computer software/hardware, electronics, network technologies, semiconductor technologies, digital media, business and financial services, mobile and e-commerce, telecommunications, aerospace, medical devices and biotech.) “We want to learn what a company’s goals are, where they want to get into the marketplace and who their competitors are,” Lee says. “If you represent lots of clients, you can’t know their business practices well.”
This business-centric approach explains why Lee & Hayes received that No. 1 ranking. Normally, patent law rankings are based on the quantity of patents obtained. But this ranking, commissioned
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