Attorney Profile

York M. Faulkner is a trial lawyer and the founder of YMF Law — an independent senior partner practice built on more than thirty years of federal court litigation. His practice centers on complex U.S. patent and IP litigation, Japan-facing legal services for Japanese companies and the U.S. and European firms that work with them, and government investigations involving corporate and individual clients.

 

Clients retain York directly to assemble and lead litigations or to work in concert with the clients' existing counsel. York is also retained at the recommendation of a client's existing counsel — to contribute specialized expertise, whether in complex patent litigation or Japan-facing matters, to ongoing representations where that depth is needed. In all cases, York is retained directly by the client and maintains an independent attorney-client relationship.

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For companies with predictable U.S. litigation exposure — where the timing of a threatened suit is reasonably predictable in advance — YMF Law functions as a standing external resource without the overhead of a large firm relationship. The model is closer to an outside advisory function than a traditional litigation retainer: continuous, informed, and structured around the client's business cycle rather than around billable events.

 

This is particularly well-suited to situations where litigation timelines are tied to known external triggers — Hatch-Waxman pharmaceutical litigation, where paragraph IV ANDA filings and regulatory exclusivity timelines make the onset of litigation foreseeable well in advance; patent landscape monitoring tied to competitor filing activity; and pre-suit risk assessment where a threatening patent is moving toward issuance or a known competitor has signaled enforcement intent.

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York's practice has particular depth in two areas that few U.S. litigators combine: Hatch-Waxman pharmaceutical patent litigation — where he has represented brand manufacturers against paragraph IV ANDA challenges across the full range of major pharmaceutical products — and cross-border matters involving Japanese parties, where forty years of direct Japan experience, Japanese language fluency, and working relationships with Japanese bengoshi and benrishi operate without an intermediary layer.

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That depth is built on more than thirty years of trying cases to verdict in jury and bench trials — beginning with his career as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, conducting grand jury investigations and obtaining convictions at trial on such charges as obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the IRS, tax evasion, false claims for tax refunds, and filing false income tax returns.​ 

 

York was recruited from the DOJ by Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, one of the country’s premier intellectual property firms, not as a technical specialist but as a trial lawyer. Finnegan had recognized, correctly, that patent litigation was becoming a discipline that required courtroom advocates. He was one of several trial lawyers from DOJ and other practices Finnegan brought in to build that capability.

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​As an equity partner for 22 years, he served in the firm’s management and led the IP Specialties Group. He handled patent and intellectual property cases in a wide range of technical fields—including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, medical devices, automotive parts, consumer electronics, and fiber optics—in federal district courts and before the International Trade Commission (ITC).

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In civil practice, York’s work has focused on intellectual property litigation across a variety of industries with a career focus on representing brand companies in “Hatch-Waxman” pharmaceutical patent infringement cases. In the pharmaceutical and life sciences fields, Mr. Faulkner has represented parties in trade secret, antitrust, and patent infringement actions involving branded pharmaceuticals such as Crestor®, Paxil®, Prozac®, Doribax®, Zymar®, Engerix-B®, Infranrix®, Verilrix®, Adenoscan®, Adenocard®, and AmBisome®. 

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In other fields, York’s litigation experience includes matters filed in federal and state courts as well as the ITC, involving medical devices, automobile parts, semiconductor design and production, steel manufacturing, commercial jet engine design, genetically modified crops, vehicle crash sensor control units, digital image processing, iris scanning and identification, liquid crystal displays, long-haul fiber optic routing and switching, and microprocessor instruction sets.

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York has a global practice. He has lived and worked periodically in Japan since 1984 in such places as Tokyo, Nagano Prefecture, Tochigi Prefecture, and Saitama Prefecture. He speaks and reads Japanese. York lectures to Japanese professional audiences on legal and economic issues affecting Japanese companies and their global businesses, and is a participant in organizations including the Licensing Executive Society of Japan (LES Japan).

 

York has extensive experience in litigation involving Japanese parties and routinely works in collaboration with local Japanese bengoshi and benrishi to reduce the burden of U.S. litigation on Japanese clients. He has managed complex global litigation requiring coordination of U.S. litigation strategy with co-pending litigation in Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, Europe, and Canada.

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York has been recognized on Managing Intellectual Property’s “IP Stars” list and has been recognized as a leading trade secret and copyright litigator by The Legal 500 U.S.

 

York is also a co-author on the leading Japanese-language publication on FDA approvals and Hatch-Waxman drug and biosimilar litigation:  FDA Pharmaceutical Regulation and Drug Patent Litigation - A Guidebook for U.S. Drug Development (Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry); FDAの薬事規制と医薬品特許権侵害訴訟～米国創薬ガイド (現代産業選書―知的財産実務シリーズ、経済産業調査会).