Playing the Title Role
Katherine Hepburn's long list of credits warrants an addition: Leslie Lott's law career. Lott first got the notion that a woman could be a lawyer from watching the Hepburn-Tracy legal farce, "Adam's Rib."
LESLIE LOTT
Founding partner / Lott and Friedland
Coral GablesExperience: Lott spent a year and a half practicing law in Saudi Arabia when her husband was based there.Quote: "You really develop a love-hate relationship with it."Family: Husband, Michael T. Moore, former executive partner in Miami for Holland & Knight and now with his own maritime and aviation firm, Moore and Co.; sons, Michael T. Moore Jr., 18, and Emmett Russell Lott Moore, 16.A Kentucky native who grew up in Perry near Tallahassee, Lott went to the University of Florida for her undergrad and law school studies. (She met her husband, Michael T. Moore, in law school where they shared a bit of a Hepburn-Tracy dynamic, she as attorney general on the honor court and he as chief defense counsel.) Wanting to try big-city life after law school, she moved to Washington, where she landed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. It launched her in a career in what later became known as intellectual property practice. After a law firm gig and stay in Saudi Arabia, she founded her own firm in Coral Gables 20 years ago. She's listed in the Best Lawyers in America in the IP field and is a "Distinguished Neutral for the Resolution of Trademark Disputes," a mediator for a joint effort of the Center for Public Resources and the International Trademark Association.
Lott has a global practice in filing trademark registrations, patents and copyrights, litigating, licensing, researching the IP bona fides of potential acquisitions and fending off trademark infringers and counterfeiters for a client list that includes Cartier, Mont Blanc, Kraft Foods, GlaxoSmithKline and others.
Many cases of infringement and counterfeiting come from Asia, but respect for intellectual property rights is improving there slowly, she says. Trademark violators get a warning letter, which is usually enough. Counterfeiters get sued from the get-go. "You sort of shoot first and ask questions later," she says.
Edwards & Angell
The Right Prescription
See what happens when you broaden your expertise? Peter Manso had a degree in biology from Florida State and was in pharmacy school in Maryland when he took a class in pharmaceutical jurisprudence.
PETER MANSO
Of counsel / Edwards & Angell
Fort LauderdaleSports fan: A Red Sox and Yankees fan growing up in Connecticut, now a Marlins and Dolphins season ticket holder.Home opener: Manso is president of the Parkland traveling baseball clubWouldn't practice: Criminal defense.Family: Wife, Karen; children, Jennifer, Peter, Heather and JacquelineThat hooked him. He finished pharmacy school in 1979 and set right off for law school, filling prescriptions on nights and weekends.
With a technical background like that, it's natural he gravitated to patent law. He reckons patents he has gotten issued generate $500 million in annual sales. "These are patents other people couldn't get," he says. His major client is King Pharmaceuticals, based in Bristol, Tenn.
Don't get him started on generics. He quickly fires off examples of iffy generics and backs up his arguments with enough information on friability, blood levels and dissolution to bury a layman. Upshot: He doesn't trust generics, doesn't take them, won't let his family use them and, he declares, "I never saw a doctor or pharmacist ever take a generic."
Manso sees the Scripps Institute as a tonic for Florida. He predicts it will bring about a "huge metamorphosis" in 10 to 20 years. "I see nothing but good things happening to the state of Florida. I can't imagine a smarter thing to do than to buy that business -- that's what (Gov. Jeb Bush) did."
HONING A SPECIALITY
Stefan v. Stein
Partner
Holland & Knight, Tampa
Age: 49Chanley Howell
Partner
Foley & Lardner, Jacksonville
Age: 40BIO
A Georgia Tech electrical engineering grad and FSU law grad, he passed the patent Bar before finishing law school. Founded his own firm in 1981 and merged into Holland & Knight in 2000.
A Jacksonville native and UF law grad, Howell turned a lifelong interest in computers and technology into an IP specialty.
CLIENTS
IBM, the Florida Department of Transportation.
Charles Schwab, PSS/World Medical, Regency Centers, Stein Mart.CREDITS
A patent attorney, he has led the firm's nationwide intellectual property practice group since January 2003 and is listed in "Best Lawyers in America" for IP.
Founder and chair of the IP section of the local Bar. Represents the Jaguars and Super Bowl Host Committee on IP matters.LAWERLY INSPIRATION
His father, patent attorney Stefan M. Stein.His father, attorney William Howell, and uncle, attorney Charles Howell. "I always felt I was made to go into law."WOULDN'T PRACTICE
Family law.
Criminal law.FAMILY
Wife, Janet; sons, Stefan and William.
Wife, Jane; daughters, Maggie and Julia.FOOTNOTE
Stein kayaks, canoes, boats, dives and fishes. For long flights, he packs a Bucky (a buckwheat hull-filled pillow), Bose noise-canceling headphones and e-books on his iPod.He's a golfer and has a Frisbee dog, the family's Australian shepherd dog.