Jon Dean

Over the last year, Jon Dean won a summary judgment for a tech company in a trade secrets case, another summary judgment for a gourmet candy company in a trade secrets case and an appeal for Airbnb under the California Coastal Act. He also advised the tech company on some tax issues.

“I do have an extremely varied practice,” said the head of McDermott’s litigation practice in L.A.

In the Airbnb appeal, an interest group contended that renting out beach homes for the short term amounted to development and changes in use, triggering the Coastal Act. Dean argued that people had been renting beachfront cottages for decades before the act was enacted and that the renters used the homes the same way owners did by going to the beach.

However, he also told the appellate justices the story about how the act was intended to grant access to the coast for all, while the goal of the plaintiffs was to keep people away. “This was about the spirit of … the act,” he said. Coastal Protection Alliance Inc. v. Airbnb, Inc., 2023 DJDAR 9187 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist., dec’d Sept. 5, 2023).

In his high-tech win, Cisco Systems claimed several employees had quit to join Plantronics, taking with them many trade secrets related to office headsets and video conferencing technology. Dean argued that the employees hadn’t taken any trade secrets, and if they had brought over some valuable material, Plantronics didn’t use it. Cisco Systems Inc., v. Chung, 4:19-cv-07562 (N.D. Cal., filed Nov. 19, 2019).

But Dean also argued that “the real story” wasn’t about allegedly stolen trade secrets. Rather, it was “that there was disappointment that folks in the free movement of their will to be employed … had left one employer to go to another.” Following the summary judgment ruling in March, the case was resolved, he said.

Dean joined the candy case just 18 days before the April trial. By March 31, he had convinced the judge that his client’s use of “Candygram” did not infringe the plaintiff’s Candy-Gram trademark because the term had become generic. “Candygram has been used for decades,” he said. Global Apogee v. Sugarfina Inc., 2:18-cv-05162 (C.D. Cal., filed June 11, 2018).

— Don DeBenedictis