Kalpana Srinivasan

When the stakes in a winner-takes-all contest are high, plaintiffs can count on Srinivasan to throw down a reliably strong hand.

In the last year alone, Srinivasan has helped her clients win more than $1 billion in prominent trade secrets and copyright infringement class actions. Srinivasan served as co-lead counsel in dueling claims between Quicken Loans affiliate Title Source Inc. and her client HouseCanary Inc., who accused Title Source of misappropriation of trade secrets, fraud and breach of contract. Title Source Inc. v. HouseCanary Inc., 2016CI06300 (73rd Jud. Dist., filed July 20, 2017).

Though it’s easy for a point to get lost over the course of a seven-week trial, Srinivasan said she emphasized to the jury the value of the technology being misappropriated and the lengths the defendant went to conceal their misuse.

“They had made representations that they weren’t building competing products. Showing how that wasn’t the case was important,” Srinivasan said.

The jury rejected the plaintiff’s claims but found in favor of HouseCanary’s counterclaims, awarding Srinivasan’s client’s a whopping $702.6 million verdict for compensatory and punitive damages.

Srinivasan also recently served as counsel to classes of musicians in high-profile copyright infringement cases brought against music companies for underpaid royalties, scoring settlements in both.

She served as co-lead counsel to 1970s rockers Flo & Eddie Inc. in a class action brought on behalf of pre-1972 song owners who claimed Sirius XM Radio Inc. had played their copyrighted works without permission.

Just one day before Srinivasan was set to deliver opening arguments at trial, the two parties settled with a deal valued at nearly $100 million. Flo & Eddie Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio Inc., 13-cv-05693 (C.D. Cal., filed June 22, 2015). In another case brought on behalf of a class of musicians who accused Spotify Inc. of failing to secure the mechanical rights to their works, Srinivasan and co-counsel from Gradstein & Marzano PC secured a settlement worth up to $112 million. Ferrick et al. v. Spotify USA Inc. et al., 16-cv-08412 (S.D. N.Y., filed Dec. 28, 2015).

The class action work Srinivasan and her team tends to handle runs the gamut, though the firm’s recently worked to bolster its focus in intellectual property issues.

“That’s an area where we’ve been able to work more heavily,” Srinivasan said. “I think trade secret litigation has been and remains a very active area in intellectual property law. Companies are really trying to figure out how to protect their very valuable assets.”

— Steven Crighton