Michael W. De Vries

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Los Angeles

Patent, copyright, trade secrets litigation

De Vries handles high-stakes trials in the intellectual property realm for multi-national corporate clients including Motorola Solutions Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp., Oracle Corp. and Fitbit Inc.

On Feb. 14, a federal jury in Chicago voted to award Motorola $764.6 million after concluding Chinese rival Hytera Communications Corp. stole critical trade secrets and infringed his client's copyright for two-way radio technology. The jurors deliberated just two-and-a-half hours after a three-month trial. Motorola Solutions Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Inc., 17-CV01972 (N.D. Ill., filed March 14, 2017).

The award included $418 million in punitive damages. "There was wholesale theft of our copyrighted source code that they used to create a rival product line," De Vries said. The defendant refused before the trial to admit that secrets were stolen, but De Vries changed that in court.

"As part of my cross, company officials acknowledged the theft had happened but claimed it was done by individual bad actors at the company," he said. "But we showed that those bad actors were among the company's top managers."

Among the trial's dramatic moments, he added, was his showing of videotaped depositions he'd taken in Hong Kong of the managers, who invoked the Fifth Amendment dozens of times -- striking a strong negative blow to their credibility.

Post-trial, after the jury left the courtroom, De Vries asked U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle of Chicago to immediately enjoin the defendant from further sales of the products at issue, a matter the judge is considering.

De Vries also co-leads other actions regarding the dispute, including several multi-patent infringement suits brought by Motorola at the International Trade Commission and in courts in Germany and Australia. And there's a patent infringement suit filed by Hytera, antitrust claims in the U.S. and China and corresponding inter partes review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

In September 2019, De Vries successfully represented EagleView Technologies Inc., the provider of aerial imagery and geographic information systems used by realtors, insurance companies and others for accurate property measurements. After a 12-day trial, he prevailed on claims that competitor Xactware Solutions Inc. willfully infringed patents used to create 3D models from aerial images of roofs.

The jury awarded his client $125 million in damages, which was $800,000 more than EagleView asked and is subject to a substantial increase due to the willful infringement finding. EagleView Technologies Inc. v. Xactware Solutions Inc., 15-CV07025 (D. New Jersey, filed Sept. 23, 2015).

De Vries devised a simple demonstration using a sample from the inventor's wife's birdhouse collection to show how the product worked. "It came to life in a courtroom in New Jersey," he said. "We knew they were right, and it was so great to see the client vindicated."

-- John Roemer