JASON G. SHEASBY

Sheasby sees his work as protecting innovation. “Innovation is the progress of humanity,” he said. His successes and losses as an IP litigator may look like assorted balls and strikes. “But there’s something deeper behind them.”

Several of his recent trial victories prove his point, he said. In August, he and co-counsel secured a $300 million jury verdict against Apple Inc. for infringing patents essential to the cell phone LTE standard held by a company named PanOptis.

Apple used the LTE patents in its iPhones, iPads and watches. “Apple would not exist as a company if it was not able to take advantage of Long-Term Evolution” or LTE, Sheasby said. “Apple is a wonderful mimic but not a very good creator of fundamental technology.” Optis Wireless Technology LLC v. Apple Inc., 2:19-cv-00066 (E.D. Tex., filed Feb. 25, 2019).

About a month after that victory, he and his partners won a $48 million jury verdict in a non-IP case that he said also demonstrates the importance of innovation. They and co-counsel represented the city of Pomona suing the U.S. arm of a mining company in Chile that sold the city fertilizer that contaminated its soil for decades. The city could trace the fertilizer to the Chilean mines thanks to very precise isotopic analysis techniques developed by the USDA. City of Pomona v. SQM North America Corp., 2:11-cv- 00167 (C.D. Cal, filed Jan. 6, 2011).

Innovation, Sheasby said, “drives not just the exchange of money between large companies… but it also drives environmental justice.”

And then there are the two multimillion-dollar verdicts he and his partners brought in for the United Services Automobile Association. The insurance and financial services company has no bank branches because its customers are military members scattered across the globe. Therefore, long before other banks thought of the idea, USAA developed and patented technology to deposit checks by cell phone, Sheasby said.

Later on, at least two other banks copied that technology, he said. In November 2019 and January 2020, he and his team won a $200 million verdict and a $102 million verdict against Wells Fargo. This month, he started trial in one of several lawsuits against PNC Bank raising the same issues. United Services Automobile Association v. PNC Bank N.A., 20-cv-00319 (E.D. Tex., filed Sept. 30, 2020).

“It’s really a disservice to innovation that USAA has to sue people to take responsibility for what I think is pretty widely acknowledged as its innovation,” Sheasby said.

He also is litigating to protect the innovation to repair McDonald’s often-broken McFlurry machines, invented by client Kytch Inc. In July, Sheasby won an order from the Alameda Superior Court requiring the defendants to turn over any Kytch devices and barred them from using or disclosing any of Kytch’s processes. Last month, Sheasby and Kytch sued McDonald’s and the ice cream machines’ manufacturer in federal court in Delaware. Kytch, Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp., 1:22-cv-00279 (D. Del., filed March 1, 2022).

– Don DeBenedictis