The international law firm of Chadbourne & Parke has hired Duane Valz as counsel in the firm's intellectual property group. He will divide his time between Chadbourne's Los Angeles office and Northern California's Silicon Valley.

Valz's practice focuses on patent portfolio development, IP strategy and complex technology transactions. He also advises on all aspects of IP issues ranging from litigation, licensing and corporate development matters as well as on social media and networking, web-content and cloud computing matters and on issues related to enterprise use and distribution of open source software.

Prior to joining Chadbourne, Valz served as vice president and associate general counsel of global patents at Yahoo. In that role, he led a team of legal and engineering professionals responsible for Yahoo's IP needs across the Internet giant's 20-plus markets around the world. Valz expects to continue to provide advice and counsel to Yahoo while at Chadbourne. Valz, who joined Yahoo in May of 2006, also led Yahoo's cross-functional Open Source Working Group.

Previously, he worked in legal positions at Quantum Corporation as director of intellectual property, at NextCard as corporate counsel and at eBusiness Design as general counsel. He also practiced IP law and commercial litigation at the San Francisco law firm Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin.