Adam R. Alper

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

San Francisco

Patent, trade secrets litigation

Alper leads Kirkland & Ellis LLP's intellectual property litigation group in the San Francisco Bay Area in patent, trade secret and other IP cases for technology clients such as Cisco Systems Inc., Fitbit Inc., Intel Corp. and Motorola Solutions Inc. The matters he handles often involve large disputes between competitors that are fought on many fronts simultaneously in U.S. and offshore jurisdictions.

An example is Alper's representation of Chicago-based Motorola Solutions Inc. in a major federal trade secrets and patent case against Chinese radio manufacturer Hytera Communications Ltd. Motorola claims Hytera copied its digital two-way radio technology and infringed several Motorola patents.

In February, the jury found in Alper's client's favor, awarding Motorola a total of $764.6 million, including $345.8 million in compensatory damages and $418.8 million in punitives, the full amount he and his colleagues sought. And the jury took only two-and-a-half hours to render its verdict following a trial that spanned more than three months. Motorola Solutions Inc. v. Hytera Communications, 17-CV01973 (N.D. Ill., filed March 14, 2017).

The trial was one part of a larger case that included litigation at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the International Trade Commission as well as proceedings in Australia and Germany, Alper said. He and colleague Michael W. De Vries led the team representing Motorola.

"It was a very large theft that included tens of thousands of confidential documents and millions of lines of source code. Mike and I found our focal point by not just explaining the technology but also the high level of responsibility corporations have not to do the wrong thing," Alper said of the Chicago trial. "We used that as the backbone of our presentation."

The Kirkland team elicited from Hytera's key witnesses admissions they were using the confidential information in their products, but tried to blame others.

"To the extent there was a theft, it was just a few bad apples in the company, they argued," Alper said.

"We suggested to the jury what kind of world it would be if executives and managers could do something that hurts you and then say the company is not responsible. That's just not right, and it's also not the law, and Hytera should be ashamed of itself," Alper said.

Jurors agreed. After 30 minutes of deliberation, they sent out a note asking for clarification of the plaintiffs' demand for punitive damages. "Apparently they saw through the attempts by the other side to distance itself from the broader issues of corporate ethics," Alper said.

He credited his team with the win.

"A long trial, many witnesses, a lot of preparation," Alper said. "We had a large group of very talented lawyers at work there to get the result we did."

--John Roemer