Jan. 29, 2003

Vision and 'Blind Luck'

SAN FRANCISCO - When Michael A. Jacobs and William I. Schwartz started Morrison & Foerster's intellectual property group in 1991, they could not possibly have known what they were getting into. The young lawyers only recently had been named junior partners at the San Francisco firm and, except for assisting in one software copyright case, had no experience either in intellectual property matters or in building a practice group. The firm itself lacked a single lawyer trained in patent law.