Intellectual Property

Represented Google LLC in its complete defense verdict from a Texas federal jury in the Western District of Texas in a case alleging that Google's Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max devices infringed a patent asserted by Profectus Technologies. The jury found that the asserted claims of the patent were invalid and that Google did not infringe.

As lead counsel, successfully defended Muji in the U.S. District Court for Delaware in a multi-patent case relating to QR code technology.

Represented a bio-tech company in patent infringement litigation, licensing disputes and IP counseling relating to its pharmaceutical products. 

After a five-week jury trial before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, our team won for UK-based BladeRoom a $30 million verdict against global manufacturing giant Emerson for willful and malicious misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of a non-disclosure agreement relating to BladeRoom’s revolutionary new methodology for constructing warehouse-sized data centers. The Daily Journal named this one of the “Top Verdicts” in California in 2018. The Court subsequently awarded BladeRoom an additional $30 million in exemplary damages and $17 million in prejudgment interest, for a total judgement exceeding $77 million. Our client settled with Facebook after the first week of trial.

We represented Dolby in seeking a declaratory judgment that Dolby’s AC-3 (“Dolby Digital”) technology does not infringe patents that Alcatel-Lucent had asserted against Dolby’s licensees.  Following protracted litigation, in which we obtained discovery sanctions against Alcatel-Lucent on multiple occasions and attorneys’ fees at the conclusion of the case, we successfully obtained orders granting summary judgment of non-infringement on the patents-in-suit.  The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court's orders awarding summary judgment and attorney's fees.

Defended Adobe Systems in a five-patent case relating to signal abstraction technology involving 70+ defendants. We successfully obtained a transfer of venue from the Eastern District of Texas to the Northern District of California followed by a judgment of non-infringement. Pursued recovery of attorneys’ fees through appeal.

Served as lead counsel for this subsidiary of Japan’s largest telecom company, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Co., in its first ever patent litigation in the United States. The case filed in Georgia Northern District Court presented unique questions involving the role of special masters to resolve section 101 motions and personal service of Japanese companies in the United States under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

Represented startup hiQ Labs Inc. in a precedent-setting litigation for data analytics, mining, and aggregator companies and their right to access publicly available data under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and a California state law on unauthorized computer access. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed hiQ’s preliminary injunction against LinkedIn.

Defended Dropbox in patent proceedings related to database synchronization technologies initially filed in the Eastern District of Texas. After successfully obtaining transfer of the action from the Eastern District of Texas to the Northern District of California, we obtained a dismissal with prejudice on behalf of our client following a court-ordered settlement conference.

We are representing Flexible Technologies in its district court litigation accusing SharkNinja of patent infringement and other intellectual property claims. SharkNinja filed an IPR, and our PTAB team successfully defended our client convincing the PTAB not to institute the requested inter partes review.

Defended Dell against software patent infringement claims brought by SoftView against Dell’s Android phones and tablets in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The case was dismissed after all of SoftView’s asserted claims were found unpatentable in inter partes review.

We submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in support of the HathiTrust “mass digitization” project. HathiTrust, backed by a consortium of university libraries and Google, has digitized millions of copyrighted books and incorporated them into a database without the consent of copyright owners. The brief addressed whether changing a work from print form to a digital database in order to add new uses counts as “transformative” under copyright fair use factor 1. In June 2014, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision that HathiTrust Digital Library’s use of the copyrighted works for full-text search constitutes a “fair use.” The court also affirmed the district court’s ruling that fair use allows the libraries to provide the works in formats accessible to the print-disabled.

Defending Dell Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against allegations that its DDPE and DDPA products infringe two patents.

Obtained a non-infringement judgment for defendants Motorola Mobility and Quickoffice Inc. on 47 mobile devices in a patent case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Judgment was upheld on appeal.