Adam R. Alper

When Cisco Systems Inc. and Arista Networks Inc. reached a $400 million settlement on a litany of patent infringement claims last August, it culminated four years of intellectual property legwork by Alper and his colleagues at Kirkland & Ellis.

Kirkland initiated Cisco’s IP enforcement actions against Arista, an emerging competitor in the Ethernet data switching market founded by former Cisco engineers. Over four years and in proceedings in district court, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Cisco asserted that Arista had a “corporate culture of copying” Cisco’s products and infringing its patents. Certain Network Devices, Related Software and Components Thereof, 337-TA-944 (ITC, filed Dec. 19, 2014).

In addition to the payment, the settlement requires Arista to modify its products and change its user interfaces to better differentiate them from Cisco’s. Settlement terms also allow Cisco to raise allegations against any new or modified Arista products through a dispute resolution process.

Alper said that case is a good example of how his team represents clients on many fronts simultaneously in U.S. and foreign jurisdictions while also getting to the heart of the relationships that enabled the infringement.

“Over the last several years, our practice has really focused on competitor-versus-competitor cases. The companies are in a dispute over intellectual property of real products,” Alper said. “There are a very rich set of facts we have to develop and present. The relationship between the parties can be very significant when trying before a jury or a judge.”

Similarly, Alper and his Kirkland team are representing Motorola Solutions Inc. in a series of patent infringement disputes against Hytera Communications. Motorola Solutions Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd. et al., 17-CV01972 (N.D. Ill., filed March 14, 2017).

Motorola alleges Hytera used former Motorola employees to steal confidential documents on two-way radio products. The disputes have been brought before the ITC, the U.S. Patent Office, and to courts in the U.S., Germany, Australia and China.

In July 2018, the ITC found Hytera infringed Motorola’s patents and violated the Tariff Act. The ITC’s order banned U.S. imports of Hytera’s infringing products effective in January.

Alper is also preparing for a jury trial in the Northern District of Illinois in November on Motorola’s trade secret misappropriation and copyright infringement claims, followed by a jury trial next year on Motorola’s assertion of seven patents against Hytera.

— Jennifer McEntee