Clem S. Roberts

To Clem Roberts, what's important about his practice over the last couple of years is not his work but the work of the whole Orrick IP business unit that he co-leads.

"We've had three trials in my team this year and they've all been wins," Roberts said. "The group is just absolutely kicking ass." Overall, Roberts added, the firm's IP practice has "an incredibly active trial docket," averaging nine or 10 a year, including the three he had himself last year.

And it's growing. The life sciences group gained four new partners a year ago and several more since. The firm says that in the past two years, 10 partners have joined the IP litigation practice and 15 have joined the broader life sciences team.

The IP business unit handles patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret litigation, as well as trademark prosecution and even some cutting-edge patent prosecution. The unit, Roberts included, is "very active at the International Trade Commission," he said, including brand-protection cases as well as patent cases.

He said a group from the Boston office regularly represents New Balance, Converse and other makers of consumer goods at the ITC to keep counterfeits out of the country. "That's a big practice area."

He also named San Francisco partner Annette Hurst, who is defending Microsoft against the New York Times lawsuit over artificial intelligence.

Roberts himself leads the large Orrick team representing Altice USA in a pair of lawsuits brought by record labels accusing the cable TV giant of allowing its users to pirate thousands of songs millions of times over peer-to-peer systems.

"It's a very novel theory," he said. "It's a brand-new area of vicarious third-party liability, claiming that the cable companies are liable because some of their users choose to share content over the internet."

The earlier case, brought by BMG, is likely to go to trial later this year, and the second by Warner Music could be tried next year, he said. Both are in the Eastern District of Texas.

In October, he successfully defended mobile game maker Zynga against patent infringement claims by IGT, a large gambling technology company. IGT v. Zynga Inc., 1:23-cv-00885 (W.D. Tex., filed April 6, 2021).

Two years ago, Roberts represented wireless speaker maker Sonos Inc. to win an unprecedented order from the ITC barring Google from importing some of its products. This last year, he successfully defended Sonos at the ITC from Google's patent infringement claims.

And he was part of the team that won a $32.5 million jury verdict for Sonos against Google last May. The judge threw out the verdict, and the case is now on appeal. Sonos, Inc. v. Google LLC, 24-1097 (9th Cir., filed Oct. 30, 2023).

-- Don DeBenedictis