Charles K. Verhoeven

Verhoeven is head of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan’s offices in San Francisco and Redwood Shores and co-chair of the firm’s national intellectual property litigation practice.

He has been lead counsel defending the Android operating system for Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Motorola Solutions Inc. and HTC Corp. in many district court and International Trade Commission actions brought by Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., a group of cases collectively known as the smartphone wars. His record as lead counsel before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is 24-2.

In 2018, he prevailed for Waymo LLC in its battle with Uber Technologies Inc. over allegations that the ride share company stole Waymo’s autonomous car technology.

Following his cross-examination of Uber’s former CEO — during which he showed the “Greed is good” speech from the movie “Wall Street” — the defense moved to settle, giving Waymo an equity stake in Uber valued at about about $245 million. Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies Inc., 17-CV00939 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 23, 2017).

Happy to win but frustrated that the case settled the day before he was going to put the alleged technology thief, former Waymo engineer Anthony Levandowski, on the witness stand, Verhoeven said, “I was disappointed that we didn’t get to try the case all the way to verdict.”

Even as the Waymo case proceeded last year, Verhoeven was in the same San Francisco federal courthouse before a different judge defending Samsung in patent litigation brought by Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., which accused Verhoeven’s client of patent infringement and refusing to engage in good faith licensing negotiations.

The case included Huawei’s moves in China, where it obtained two injunction orders from the Intermediate People’s Court of Shenzhen that prevented Samsung from making or selling its 4G LTE smartphones anywhere in China.

To take down that roadblock, Verhoeven employed a novel tactic.

“We persuaded the U.S. court that the Shenzhen injunctions could render meaningless the proceedings before it and pose a serious risk of harm to Samsung’s Chinese operations,” he said.

In April 2018, U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick issued a rare anti-suit order against Huawei that stopped it from enforcing the Chinese injunctions until he could resolve the parties’ competing contract claims. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. v. Samsung Electronics Co., 16-CV02787 (N.D. Cal., filed May 24, 2016).

Earlier this year, the parties agreed to settle the matter, Verhoeven said.

“It was a really good result for the client,” he said. “Samsung was not the aggressor here. Huawei tried for an unfair advantage and didn’t get it.”

— John Roemer