Jared B. Bobrow

On the heels of a major victory that clarified changes to venue law, Jared B. Bobrow made the jump to Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe last year to lead the intellectual property group. The group has seen significant growth since then, he said.

“The group is tremendously busy. Our hours, our production, all of those have grown significantly since May” when Bobrow joined from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, he said.

Bobrow’s practice has continued to flourish as well. He’s handled half a dozen cases for Micron Technology Inc., the most prominent of which was against Harvard College. Micron had sought a change in venue for the case, which was denied by a Massachusetts federal judge.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, however, agreed with Bobrow and found that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC changed the controlling law and could be applied to pending cases as the applicable venue defense hadn’t been “available” prior to the decision. TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, 137 S. Ct. 1514 (2017).

“Micron made it clear that TC Heartland represented a change in the law that it wasn’t simply a continuation in the old law,” Bobrow said. “Some courts said TC Heartland changed the law, but the majority said it hadn’t changed the law, and so there was a very wide split among the district courts on this issue.”

The case, which was transferred to the District of Delaware, settled in March 2018. In re: Micron Technology, Inc., 2017-138 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 15, 2017).

On behalf of Micron, Bobrow also successfully challenged seven patent claims brought by Lone Star Silicon Innovations LLC and four by Innovative Memory Systems Inc. before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

A related federal court action by Lone Star claiming $350 million in damages was dismissed in March 2018. Lone Star Silicon Innovations LLC v. Micron Technology, Inc., 18-CV01680 (N.D. Cal., filed March 16, 2018).

Rapid changes to intellectual property law has piqued interest in the classes Bobrow teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law, he said.

“Tech overall is very strong right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of litigation in cloud computing, in networks, in semiconductors, in software generally.”

— Erin Lee