Robert S. Shwarts

Last year, Shwarts successfully secured a dismissal of an U.S. International Trade Commission complaint against five Chinese companies accused of trade secrets misappropriation.

Shwarts is also often tapped to advise clients such as Oracle Corp., Acer Inc., and 10X Genomics Inc. regarding their most important trade secret matters.

“When you’re asked to defend trade secret cases like these, it’s important to develop an early and aggressive strategy and important to get the client buy in on your strategy and stick with it,” Shwarts said.

When Japan’s Hitachi Metals Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary Metglas Inc. sued five Chinese companies with the International Trade Commission alleging trade secrets misappropriation, Shwarts was tapped by Advanced Technology & Materials and the other defendants to challenge the accusations. Certain Amorphous Metal and Products Containing Same, 337-TA-1078 (ITC, filed Sept. 19, 2017).

“ITC cases move very quickly — all discovery happens from the filing of the matter to the hearing on the merits, and it usually takes about a year if that means all the discovery is done in a four-to-five month window,” Shwarts said.

“Once these cases start, they’re very intense, but we were determined to pressure the other side as much as possible and let them know we were going to fight, and that they didn’t have a basis to allege that our clients did anything wrong,” he added.

Shwarts and the other attorneys focused on what they said was Hitachi’s failure to prove that AT&M misappropriated trade secrets, and de-emphasized AT&M’s independent development of the technology.

The strategy worked.

Shwarts persuaded Hitachi and Metglas to dismiss the case at the end of discovery. The complaint was withdrawn last June.

“Convincing them to dismiss voluntarily was very rewarding both for our team and clients,” said Shwarts. “It happens rarely, which is why it’s such a big deal.”

— Gina Kim