Adam R. Alper

Adam R. Alper and his frequent co-lead counsel, Michael De Vries, focus their practice on taking IP cases to trial. In particular, they specialize in representing the plaintiff in competitor cases.

He and De Vries are set for back-to-back trials in a pair of those cases this summer. In the first, Alper represents a Qualcomm spinoff accusing a company started by the plaintiff's former president of infringing multiple patents on technology that allows transportation companies to track assets and communicate with drivers. That trial is scheduled to start July 8. Omnitracs LLC v. Platform Science Inc., 3:20-cv-00958 (S.D. Cal., filed May 26, 2020).

Then, on Aug. 5, he goes to trial representing a biomedical company in opposition to the assertion that a competitor's microbiome therapy products do not infringe his client's patents. Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Finch Therapeutics Group Inc., 1:21-cv-01694 (D. Del., filed Dec. 1, 2021).

"We really have a trial-focused practice," Alper said. "That's an area that we definitively excel in." In fact, as of February, they have won seven trials in a row.

For that February victory, however, Alper and De Vries represented the defendant. Had they lost, their client was looking at potentially $4 billion in damages.

The dispute was over patents involved in the manufacture of the equipment used to manufacture semiconductor chips. The plaintiff said that two of its patents were infringed by chip-making equipment built and sold by one of Alper's clients, Applied Materials Inc., to his other client, Samsung. The plaintiff sought royalty on every chip made by the giant chipmakers using Applied Materials equipment. Demaray LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 6:20-cv-00636 (W.D. Tex., filed July 14, 2020).

"The actual allegedly infringing technology would be found in the Applied Materials equipment," Alper said. "But Samsung was being sued because it was using [that equipment]."

Alper said the case presented unusual difficulties. First, the plaintiff portrayed itself as a lone inventor against the giant Samsung. Second, the jury learned that another big chip manufacturer had settled with the plaintiff prior to the trial.

He and his team won, Alper said, by having "a very solid technical case" and by "tell[ing] the story of what happened."

What happened, he told the jury, was that for years, the plaintiff had made a point of distinguishing its equipment from Applied Materials'. That changed when it became involved with what he called a "patent monetization specialist" who proposed "a massively inflated damages demand."

"We told the jury that this is about what's right and what's wrong, and this was not a proper use of the United States patent system."

-- Don DeBenedictis