I. Neel Chatterjee

Goodwin Procter LLP

Redwood City

Intellectual property litigation

Chatterjee has helped protect some of Silicon Valley's most valuable intellectual property for decades, work that garnered a star turn in The Social Network, the movie adaptation of him counseling Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Chatterjee grew up in Silicon Valley and started his career in copyright law in the 1990s, at the dawn of the internet boom.

"Even back then, Silicon Valley was the site for disputes between tech companies," he recalled. "I eventually got fairly involved in trade secret, patent cases quite a bit and got really interested."

Chatterjee recently litigated a patent dispute between Alphonso Inc. and Samba TV. Alphonso is a TV data and measurement company and Samba is a content recommendation engine that tracks viewer activities through smart TVs. Samba sued Alphonso over technology related to using collected TV data to provide directed and targeted advertising to customers' smart mobile devices.

Goodwin Procter wasn't retained by Alphonso until two years into the case, but Chatterjee and his team successfully secured a defense motion for summary judgment in 2019 just before trial. Freestream Media Corp. vs. Alphonso Inc. 17-CV02107 (N.D. Cal., filed April 19, 2017).

The matter is on appeal.

"Summary judgments for non-infringement are always a bit tough to do, and these cases can be very technically complex," Chatterjee said. "So you have to figure out how to develop a core factual dispute that's understandable."

Chatterjee said he has always been drawn to litigating complex cases with billions of dollars on the line.

"I get so excited on matters where I can break legal ground or do something people haven't done before, and that's where I'm able to craft my narratives that are differentiated," he said.

Chatterjee's passion for the job led him to create a program where he takes a group of elementary school students to federal court to watch real litigators argue a patent case to teach them about juries, and how patent law fits into the Constitution. He said the program draws on his strengths: approachability, humanity with a bit of humor.

"It's a huge part of all that I do," he said. "When I interact with people, it's very 'what you see is what you get.' Authenticity really matters with both judges and juries."

-- Gina Kim