Remembering Bill Needle
Retired Partner William H. Needle, whose decision in 2008 to merge his Atlanta intellectual property boutique—one of the preeminent firms of its kind—with Ballard Spahr helped establish the firm as a prominent player in sophisticated IP work, died on April 11. He was 80.
Genial, modest, and passionate about barbecue—both eating and judging it—Bill served as the first chair of Ballard’s IP Department; did work for household-name clients; served for decades as a special assistant attorney general for the State of Georgia on intellectual property matters; taught at law schools in Georgia, South Carolina, and Beijing, China; and was an arbitrator, mediator, and special master, work that continued after he retired from the firm in 2016.
“When Bill Needle and his firm agreed to join Ballard in 2008, the few IP attorneys at Ballard were ecstatic,” said Lynn Rzonca, who chairs the firm’s IP Department. “Not only would we skyrocket up the ranks of big firms with a full-service IP practice, but we also would have the Bill Needle as our first-ever chair of the IP Department. Bill was an excellent leader who was renowned for his IP knowledge and stellar judgment. He knew how to bring out the best in his team.”
In an age of specialization, Bill was well-rounded and multifaceted. He handled patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets in both the litigation and transactional areas. “He covered the entire spectrum of IP practice, which is highly unusual,” said Mitch Katz, who succeeded Bill as head of the IP department. “He did it all, and he did it well.”
Bill handled trademark work for Domino’s Pizza in its early days and managed copyright and trademark litigation for Cabbage Patch Kids. On the day the partners at Ballard and Needle & Rosenberg were voting on the merger, Bill arranged to have a Cabbage Patch doll presented to then-Ballard Chair Arthur Makadon as he presided over the proceedings via videoconference.
“Bill was a legend in every sense of the word,” wrote Atlanta Office Managing Partner Rich Miller in a message to colleagues. “The IP community simply would not exist as we know it today without Bill. Our office is but a small part of Bill’s lasting legacy. We owe its success and staying power directly to the foundation that Bill built when he started the firm that became Needle & Rosenberg more than four decades ago.”
That firm was small but ambitious, as illustrated by its decision in the early 1990s to compete—successfully—for a contract to do patent work for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health. “We were by far the smallest firm doing that work and the only one in the Southeast,” Mitch Katz said. “That and Cabbage Patch put us on the map.”
Sumner Rosenberg, now retired, joined forces with Bill in 1983. “He was a great people person, and I was more of the in-house partner, keeping things running. That was the crux of our partnership, and we were good friends through it all. All those years, we never had a harsh word.”
Partners who practiced with Bill over many years credited his modest style of leadership with enabling the success of others.
“Bill was fond of saying, jokingly, ‘You know, it’s all about me.’ But it never was. It was all about other people—his partners, colleagues, students, and family,” said Mark Stewart, who as strategic planning partner was instrumental in bringing the Needle lawyers to Ballard. “To all of those relationships, Bill brought great intellectual strength with openness, humility, and, of course, humor. From our first meeting in Atlanta with Bill and the other Needle & Rosenberg partners, I had no doubt that I had found a friend, and the firm a leader and true partner.”
Bill had the idea of a “Bell Ringer” at Needle & Rosenberg—a tradition that lives on in the IP Department today. Whenever there was good news to share, the news bearer would ring a ship’s bell mounted to the wall in the reception area until everyone came out of their offices to hear the announcement. Any good thing—a win in court, exciting new work, passing the bar exam, or having a baby—could be a reason to ring the bell. For the IP Department, the bell still rings (albeit virtually) to spread good news to its lawyers from coast to coast.
“He was a great leader, clearly the person everyone looked to,” Sumner Rosenberg said. “Everybody learned from him.”
A quality of Bill’s that stood out to Retired Partner Larry Nodine was his ironclad sense of honesty, and his insistence that professional mistakes be owned up to immediately. “I remember how reflexive he would be, his level of passion about it.”
Also memorable was Bill’s penchant for eating breakfast in dives, where he invariably knew, and joked with, the servers. “With Bill you didn’t go to some fancy place,” Larry said. “His thing was, where do you find the best biscuits in the city?”
Conversation with Bill was easy—and mouthwatering when it veered into his unusual hobby: judging barbecue, in which he was trained and certified. Southern barbecue, that is: pork and only pork. As he once opined to a magazine reporter, beef barbecue isn’t really barbecue. “I realize a large segment of the country believes beef barbecue is barbecue,” he told the reporter. “I may want to run for president one day, so I won’t disparage those folks.”
Bill was devoted to his family. He is survived by his wife, Valerie; daughters Jennifer Campbell, Julianne Walsh, Meredith Lewis, and Amanda Mohan and their spouses; his brother, Jack; and seven grandchildren.
A memorial service for Bill will take place at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 17, at The Temple in Atlanta.
Read his obituary here.