Douglas E. Lumish

Douglas Lumish began his career in intellectual property law in 1996, joining the IP group at Weil Gotshal. Initially, he aimed to become a trial lawyer, a passion encouraged by their law school professor, Paula Downey. Downey's guidance led Lumish to Matt Powers' practice at Weil's Silicon Valley Office, known for its prolific trial work and exceptional team of IP trial lawyers.

"Matt and the Weil team were trying a ton of cases back then and had built an incredible team of top IP trial lawyers," Lumish said, adding: "The fact patterns are so complicated, the law keeps changing, opposing counsel are always of the highest caliber which forces you to up your game, and you get to meet and work with people who have in many instances truly changed the world with the technologies they invented and the products they developed."

He joined Latham in 2013 after working at the firm now known as Kasowitz Benson, Torres LLP.

While unable to discuss specific victories, Lumish expresses pride in the team's achievements this year, including several wins in IP cases at the summary judgment and appeal stages, covering a range of issues from non-infringement and invalidity to 101 ineligibility grounds.

"On the patent side, we continued to face the perpetual challenge of distilling fiercely complicated technologies down to the core issues that are accessible to a judge or jury and to find a path to victory through a complex forest of facts and law," he said. "On the trade secret side, you face many of the same technical and legal challenges, and then those are often exacerbated by intensely personal accusations against companies and their employees."

One recent victory from the last few years, which Lumish has previously discussed, includes a major win on summary judgment for Meta in a case involving four patents that the plaintiff claimed cover the "typehead" function in Facebook. MasterObjects Inc. v. Meta Platforms Inc., 3:21-cv-05428 (N.D. Cal., filed Jan. 26, 2021).

Lumish said he is continuing to see significant growth in the number of trade secret cases filed in federal courts throughout the country.

"On the tech side, AI is exploding (as everyone knows) and that is beginning to show up in IP cases and will only grow over time," he said. "There has also been another wave of consolidation of patents in the hands of a few very large non-practicing entities which are bringing a significant number of large patent cases against the tech industry."