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Latham & Watkins has hired McDermott Will & Emery intellectual property head Larry Cohen to launch a contentious intellectual property (IP) practice in the UK.

Cohen, whose practice covers contentious IP, including patent and trademark work, handed in his notice at McDermott last week. Latham now hopes to expand the group. In the past Cohen has worked with clients including Nike, Puma and Hitachi.

The chair of Latham’s London litigation department, John Hull, said: “We have a well-established IP litigation practice in the US and in France and Germany so it seemed to us that this was the missing piece of the jigsaw. We have non-contentious IP here but patent litigation is very specialist, so strategically it made sense to hire someone with those skills.”

The departure of Cohen, exclusively revealed on legalweek.com, will leave McDermott’s City IP team with Hiroshi Sheraton as its sole partner, alongside patent attorney Justin Hill and 12 further fee earners.

Commenting on the hire, Olswang IP partner Nigel Swycher said: “He is undoubtedly a material subtraction from McDermott’s practice. He was their mainstay. His loss will be a significant disruptive experience and a major name to add to Latham.”

Cohen’s departure is the latest in a series of senior moves from McDermott’s City arm, with former corporate head William Charnley last month quitting to join the UK arm of Anglo-American giant Mayer Brown.

McDermott has now seen a dozen partners leave its London office in just over a year, with other notable departures including employment head Fraser Younson, who joined Berwin Leighton Paisner, and litigator and former managing partner John Reynolds, now at White & Case.

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