Gills, Jeanne M.

Jeanne M. Gills is a partner and intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm’s Management Committee. She also serves as vice chair of the firm’s national Intellectual Property Department focusing on Strategic Marketing & Business Development, and she previously served as vice chair of the Intellectual Property Litigation Practice.

Jeanne acts as lead trial counsel in complex patent, trade secret, trademark, copyright, and unfair competition litigation and appeals — including USPTO post-grant proceedings — in diverse industries ranging from electronics to biotechnology. Her trial experience includes “bet the company” cases with several hundreds of millions at stake, e.g., In re Certain Multi-Stage Fuel Vapor Canister Systems and Activated Carbon Components Thereof (Inv. No. 337-TA-1140) (ITC patent trial on automotive technology), TAS v. Cummins (jury trial on a license covering engine technology), and DeKalb v. Pioneer (jury trial on patents covering genetically engineered corn). Jeanne has likewise been lead counsel in over 25 PTAB proceedings, having handled IPRs, CBMs, and rare derivation proceedings, including defense of several PTAB decisions before the Federal Circuit (see e.g., IPR2013-00178 and IPR2013-00578).

Her litigation experience has dovetailed into counseling clients on global IP strategy, including work on the division of patent/technology assets for Kraft Foods’ 2012 split (into Kraft Foods and Mondelēz) and leading the IP side of M&A transactions, such as work on potential $4 billion acquisition in power technology space and recent $1.2 billion deal involving the creation on behalf of power technology companies two JV entities (one in the U.S. and one in Switzerland).

With her electronics background and given her attorney registration to practice before the USPTO, Jeanne’s broad-based IP experience also includes: counseling related to product configuration trade dress and use of color as a trademark; handling TTAB and UDRP matters; resolving copyright ownership disputes, particularly in the areas of computer software and associated documentation; handling contractual disputes concerning IP rights and the theft or use of IP by a company’s former employees, business partners and/or independent contractors; counseling clients on IP holding companies, including how to maximize value from an IP portfolio when certain assets are likely to be the subject of IP litigation; handling cases involving the intersection of trade dress, design patent, and utility patent protection for consumer and industrial products; and conducting discovery abroad throughout Europe, Singapore, and Japan.