Innovative companies around the world rely on their intellectual capital to compete. This competitive drive can lead to legitimate hiring and fair reverse engineering, or to illicit employee raiding and trade secret theft, and eventual high-stakes trade secret cases. We have unparalled expertise handling such cases on both sides of counsel table. Whether the matter involves alleged wholesale theft of technology or individual employee mobility, from advice and counsel, to injunctions to civil and criminal trials, whether international or local in scope, we deliver results.
Cases of Note
Software Co. v. Software Co.: We defended a red-hot Silicon Valley software company that provides information analysis to the intelligence, defense, and law enforcement communities from trade secret and copyright charges. Our client's competitor brought the charges in the Eastern District of Virginia. We settled the case in early 2011 after five and a half torrid months of rocket docket litigation.
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. v. Former Employee: Representing Cadence Design Systems, Inc., we secured cutting-edge R&D materials that an employee conspired to misappropriate to start a competing venture overseas. We prevailed, obtaining a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction against the employee.
DuPont Photomasks v. Former Employees: DuPont Photomasks' departing employees had taken vital operating business process and customer information. We protected the company's trade secret interests by obtaining a temporary restraining order within 48 hours of being retained, and later negotiated a stipulated injunction placing substantial limits on the activities of the departing employees.
Plaintiff v. Investment Funds: We achieved an early resolution of numerous state and federal court actions for a venture fund company and one of its partners. Our clients faced trade secret misappropriation, copyright infringement, and breach of contract claims in both state court and in federal court. We were able to remove the state court action to federal court, and then secure an early settlement for our clients.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company v. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation: We represented the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, TSMC, against China’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, SMIC, in the largest trade secret misuse case ever tried. SMIC owed its existence to technology stolen from our client, and faced our damages claim of $2 billion, which would have exceeded SMIC's entire market value. The parties produced nearly 18 million pages of documents and conducted 266 days of deposition in the U.S. and in Asia. Following a jury verdict in favor of our client, SMIC agreed to pay $200 million in cash and approximately $130 million of its company stock. Ultimately TSMC's goal was to protect its intellectual property, not shut down its competitor, and so settled for far less than it could have recovered. For foreign companies that market their goods and services in the U.S., this case established that California’s trade secret statute will protect the intellectual property essential to those goods and services, even if the theft occurred in Asia.
Multinational Biotechnology Company v. Biopharmaceutical Company: We won partial summary judgment for a Seattle biopharmaceutical company and its founder in a trade secret and contract action over a cystic fibrosis drug. Aided by that ruling, and the favorable progress of the trial relating to the remaining claims, another biotechnology company acquired our client for $365 million mid-trial.