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ATTORNEYS - Robert M. Duffy

Practice Areas
Robert Duffy, a founding shareholder of the firm, concentrates his practice on complex business litigation. He frequently handles a wide range of intellectual property matters including patent and copyright cases. He represents business clients in matters of trade regulation, broker/customer disputes, securities litigation, shareholder litigation, probate and trust litigation and executive employment challenges in courts throughout the United States.

Work for Clients
As a trial lawyer, Bob has handled hundreds of commercial cases in diverse practice areas including patent, copyright, and trademark litigation; post-acquisition disputes; life insurance coverage and settlement litigation; broker-dealer disputes and securities litigation and routinely represents minority shareholders in disputes involving emerging technologies and manufacturing. He has counseled numerous corporations and minority shareholders in breach of fiduciary duty and dissolution cases.

Bob and the D&S team prevailed in a major arbitration on behalf of CT-based manufacturer of tankless water heaters, involved in a post-acquisition M&A dispute with its buyer. In the six-day “baseball” arbitration, the Arbitrator agreed to the figure advanced by D&S, and ordered the claimant to pay all costs associated with the arbitration. The case presented a thorny and novel issue of how damages are to be calculated in a breach of a representation in a stock purchase agreement. The case was featured in Lawyers Weekly in June of 2011. Read article here.

Other cases Bob successfully handled include:

• On behalf of a Fortune 100 clients, Bob handled an alleged infringement on a competitor's technology in a multi-district litigation. Bob obtained summary judgment on most issues raised in its individual motion, with findings of no literal infringement of the patented technology.
  
  
• A firm client, who is a boutique financial services company, entered into a contract with one of its clients to provide management services in preparation for the sale of the business. When the business to be sold did not pay the firm's client for those services, Bob secured an attachment on the assets in its bank account and prepared for arbitration. A few days prior to the scheduled arbitration in January 2011, the case settled on favorable terms.
  
  
• Bob represented a multi-billion dollar financial corporation in a patent infringement suit involving specialty pens. D&S attorneys negotiated a settlement in which the supplier paid a lump sum to the plaintiff patent holder to swiftly resolve the case. The client incurred only nominal expenses in defending and resolving the patent infringement suit, as D&S was able to negotiate a settlement for payment of the majority its fees by the supplier.

Professional Recognition
Bob has been named as a leading commercial litigation attorney in the current editions of Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers, Woodward/White Inc's Best Lawyers in America , New England Super Lawyer, and Benchmark Litigation The Definitive Guide to America's Leading Litigation Attorneys. He is rated "AV" in Martindale Hubbell's Peer Review Ratings

Education
J.D., Suffolk University Law School (cum laude), 1988; B.A., Providence College (cum laude), 1982.

Papers and Presentations
Advising Victims of Securities Fraud (Rhode Island Bar Association, May 2009); The Law of the Internet in Rhode Island (National Business Institute 2001); Internet Basics for the Rhode Island Attorney (National Business Institute 1999); CLE Seminar on the Revised Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1995); CLE Seminar on Restrictive Covenants in Employment Agreements (1995); CLE Seminar on The Negotiated Rates Act of 1993 (Associated Industry of Massachusetts Journal, October 1994); CLE Seminar on the Business Judgment Rule (1992).

Bar and Court Admissions
Massachusetts (1988); Rhode Island (1990); United States District Court, District of Massachusetts (1989); United States District Court, District of Rhode Island (1991); United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit (1990); United States Tax Court (2000).

rduffy@duffysweeney.com