Overview
Calfee’s Chemicals group offers a broad spectrum of commercial insight and practical legal advice and counseling services to companies in the chemical industry.
Whether a client needs assistance navigating EPA regulations, is entering into a complex commercial contract in the chemical space, needs legal support related to its intellectual property, or is buying or selling a chemical-related business, Calfee’s chemical industry group has the expertise to navigate these diverse cross-practice issues.
Our attorneys collaborate to assist with intellectual property, litigation, environmental and other business opportunities and challenges in this constantly changing industry.
Services Our Attorneys Provide Within the Chemicals Industry
Calfee provides coordinated legal services to help chemical industry clients manage transactions, protect innovation, resolve disputes, and address environmental and regulatory challenges. Examples include:
- Corporate transactions, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, governance matters, and commercial contracting
- Environmental compliance, remediation, administrative orders, regulatory counseling, and environmental litigation
- Complex litigation involving chemical delivery systems, alleged contamination, PFAS claims, and other industry-related disputes
- Patent prosecution, trademark matters, IP portfolio management, trade secret strategy, freedom-to-practice counseling, and IP litigation
- Strategic legal support for manufacturers, suppliers, and multinational companies operating across the chemicals sector
Professionals
Professionals
Experience
Experience
Calfee represents a number of clients doing business in the chemicals industry, including the following:
- Abbott Labs
- Chart Industries, Inc.
- Ferro Corporation
- GOJO Industries, Inc. (recently acquired by The Clorox Company)
- Lincoln Electric
- Owens Corning
- RPM International Inc.
- Swagelok
- The Andersons, Inc.
Calfee’s representative experience in the chemicals industry reflects the firm’s cross- practice capabilities, including advising clients on complex corporate transactions, environmental law and litigation matters, intellectual property concerns, insurance coverage, commercial agreements, and other business issues affecting chemical manufacturers, suppliers, and related groups.
Construction Litigation
- Calfee successfully defended an engineering firm in bet-the-company litigation stemming from the client’s design and installation of a custom chemical delivery system. The project owner claimed damages of over $30 million purportedly resulting from alleged project delays and alleged performance issues.
Corporate and Finance
- Served as co-legal counsel to a global manufacturer and sole counsel to the founding shareholders in the client company's sale to a private equity firm in a complex transaction involving the company's presence on multiple continents and structure as a multi-step merger; the matter involved the negotiation of governance documentation for the significant seller rollover.
- Served as exclusive counsel to a publicly traded Fortune 500 manufacturing company in its 2023 acquisition of substantially all of the fabrication-related assets of a Texas company.
- Served as exclusive counsel to a publicly traded Fortune 500 manufacturing company in its 2024 acquisition of substantially all of the assets a company located in Hawaii and a company located in New York.
Environmental Law
- Representing a major American chemical company client in a matter involving the client's purchased property, and reached an agreement with the Ohio EPA on administrative orders to manage solid waste on the property.
- Negotiating individual orders for the client, a Fortune 500 chemical corporation, involving the remediation of the former disposal at several sites related to the client’s former facility. The sites include private residential property and industrial quarry properties. These are legacy sites, which remain on the client’s books until resolved. Two sites have been resolved thus far. Specifically, Calfee is handling the negotiation of Orders addressing the legacy sites in the area.
- Serve as the lead environmental litigation counsel for a globally recognized designer and manufacturer. This client was sued in federal court over an alleged discharge of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances from its facility. This is a federal class action suit against multiple entities in the carpet industry for alleged PFAS contamination of drinking water, with remedy sought being a proportionate share of replacing a local land application system from process water discharge.
Intellectual Property
- Provide ongoing patent prosecution and IP strategy for a privately held, multinational manufacturing company and serve as lead counsel on an ongoing IP litigation matter in the Southern District of New York.
- Represent a multibillion-dollar international manufacturer in domestic and foreign patent litigation, patent and trademark prosecution, and IP strategy. We also provide management and strategy services for its patent and trademark portfolios and advise on IP strategy. Calfee is essentially the client’s “go-to” intellectual property counsel on all IP matters.
- Assisted a publicly traded, Fortune 500 company client with drafting and prosecuting its patent applications and provided legal opinions and consultation on patent portfolio growth. Together, Calfee and the client’s in-house IP counsel handle the implementation of the client’s IP protection objectives for the company’s four divisions. This work includes interfacing with Research & Development and business leaders concentrated in Europe, including Great Britain, France, and Finland.
- Serve as Chief Outside Intellectual Property Counsel for a publicly traded, Fortune 500, multibillion-dollar, multinational holding company with multiple operating companies based in the U.S. and abroad. Calfee assists with patents and prosecution, trademark and trademark enforcement, IP litigation, and trade secret matters, among others, in both U.S. and foreign jurisdictions.
- Serve a publicly traded Fortune 500 manufacturer by working with a small team of in-house patent/IP counsel and managing a larger team of external Calfee attorneys. Together, they handle the implementation of the client’s objectives in protecting the intellectual property embodied in the company’s critical insulation, roofing, and building materials innovations. Routinely interface with Research & Development and business leaders concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. Specifically, oversee the drafting and prosecution of hundreds of patent applications throughout the world on behalf of the client, as well as counselling the client on critical IP-related issues such as freedom-to-practice, trade secret strategies, and innovation harvesting.
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