Latham Lands Two Partners on Annual Honor Roll of Top IP Lawyers in California
Founding member of Latham’s Connectivity, Privacy & Information Practice Andy Gass and Bay Area Litigation & Trial Department Co-Chair Doug Lumish have been named Top Intellectual Property Lawyers by the Daily Journal, California’s legal newspaper of record.
Gass is a pioneering IP litigator shaping complex laws in the digital music industry and a thought leader on emerging issues in copyright law, antitrust law, and the intersection between the two. In his published profile, Gass was recognized for a variety of work, including: securing a decision for Spotify in which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase royalty rates for streaming services (the first time an appellate court has vacated the agency’s principal royalty determination); securing a Ninth Circuit victory on behalf of Creative Commons which validated the nonprofit’s free copyright licenses, ensuring that hundreds of millions of copyrighted works around the world will not be encumbered by undue reuse restrictions; and representing Apple in a copyright dispute over emojis.
Noting the strengths of the firm’s newly formed Connectivity, Privacy & Information Practice, Gass said: “We participate in everything from rulemaking before the Copyright Office to rate-setting proceedings before the Copyright Royalty Board all the way to antitrust litigation arguing that a particular aggregation of rights is anticompetitive.”
Marking his eleventh consecutive year on the Daily Journal’s Top IP Lawyers honor roll, Lumish is celebrated as a sought-after trial lawyer that represents some of the world’s most innovative companies regarding a spectrum of intellectual property and technology litigation matters. Among the high-profile cases highlighted in his profile are his defense of Facebook in a trade secrets dispute, and his ongoing representation of Velodyne, a company that designs technology to help self-driving cars detect and map terrain in three dimensions, in a series of patent disputes.
Discussing Velodyne, Lumish noted, “My client is a pioneer in the vision systems you see on these self-driving cars. I get to work with the people who did this first.” Detailing his early litigation victories for the innovative San Jose-based company, Lumish commented, “We were able to bring out this common sense argument that everyone can grasp.”