Paul Stephen Fardy

Stephen Fardy is an equity partner who focuses his practice on intellectual property and complex commercial litigation. Stephen has a national practice representing entities ranging from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies. He litigates matters involving trademarks, trade dress, unfair trade practices, copyrights, patents, right of publicity and privacy issues, as well as complex commercial fraud, contracts and other business disputes. Stephen also handles proceedings with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, prosecutes trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and further manages an extensive trademark docket of over 1,000 national and international trademarks. Finally, he handles licensing and provides counseling regarding intellectual property issues.

Stephen has successfully prevailed in intellectual property and commercial trials and arbitrations in Illinois, Colorado, North Carolina, Maryland, Indiana and Nevada and has litigated matters nationally in over a dozen jurisdictions. For example, Stephen, along with partner Peter Skiko, obtained a $61 million trade secret settlement against a Fortune 500 financial services defendant (largest recorded settlement in Illinois in 2014 and ninth largest trade secret settlement ever recorded in the United States). He also recently received a defense verdict in an intellectual property and patent ownership trial in Colorado. Finally, he obtained summary judgment for renowned singer and songwriter, Michael Jackson, in a copyright and trademark dispute.

Stephen received a Trial Lawyer Excellence Award from the Jury Verdict Reporter in 2015. He was featured on the cover of the October 2015 edition of Chicago Lawyer Magazine for his success in his intellectual property practice. He also was named one of “40 Illinois Attorneys Under Forty” in 2009 by the Law Bulletin Publishing Company.  

Stephen serves as chair of the firm's Intellectual Property practice group and on a variety of firm administrative committees. In addition, Stephen takes great pride in having served as the 2015 firm co-chair of the Chicago Bar Foundation's Investing in Justice campaign, in which Swanson, Martin & Bell, LLP raised the highest amount in firm history for the Foundation.