John McGaraghan advises companies at all stages of growth on complex intellectual property transactions, with a particular focus on the software, semiconductor, and AI sectors.

John draws on deep industry knowledge and hands-on technology experience to guide public and private companies through a full range of high-stakes matters involving:

  • Corporate and strategic transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, investments, and divestitures
  • Intellectual property counseling and licensing
  • Complex commercial and product-related agreements
  • Open-source software licensing and compliance
  • Capital markets and financing matters

He regularly helps technology companies structure, draft, and negotiate agreements that build and protect enterprise value. John’s practice spans a broad range of technology-driven industries, including SaaS, hardware, automation, and big data. He also counsels chip companies and IP vendors on all aspects of their technology licensing operations, from development to core licensing to manufacture and supply.

In the open-source arena, John advises companies on implementing ingestion and contribution policies, audits and remediation in connection with corporate transactions, and establishing and managing open source software projects.

A recognized thought leader, John is a member of the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section and the American Society of Composers and Producers. He also teaches a course on intellectual property licensing at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. John is certified as a Black Duck Legal Professional.

Before joining Latham, John was a partner at another global law firm, where he led a technology transactions practice in the Bay Area. Prior to law school, he worked as a software developer and as a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, producer, and performer.

John’s experience includes advising:

Strategic Transactions

  • Audience on:
    • Purchasing Sensor Platforms*
    • Its sale to Knowles*
  • Brocade on its sale to Broadcom and associated divestitures to Arris, Extreme Networks, and Hitachi Data Systems*
  • Cortina on its spin-out of Cortina Access and sale to Inphi*
  • Cortina Access on its sale to Realtek*
  • CSR on its sale to Qualcomm*
  • DoorDash on its joint venture with Loblaw’s to enable rapid grocery delivery in Canada*
  • Fungible on its strategic partnership with, and subsequent sale to, Microsoft*
  • KLA-Tencor on various acquisitions, including Orbotech*
  • LiveRamp on selling Axciom to Interpublic Group*
  • Nutanix on:
    • Its spin-out and sale of the Frame desktop-as-a-service business*
    • A series of related strategic transactions with Cisco*
  • Pensando on its sale to AMD*
  • Rambus on:
    • Purchasing Snowbush IP’s SerDes technology assets from Semtech*
    • Purchasing a memory interconnect business line from Inphi*
    • Selling PHY IP licensing business line to Cadence*
  • Seagate on:
    • Purchasing Samsung’s hard drive business*
    • Various confidential transactions related to developing and supplying flash memory chips and Ips*
  • SES-Imagotag on its strategic Electronic Shelf Label collaboration with Qualcomm*

Licensing Agreements

  • Harmonic on its CableOS platform licensing transaction with Comcast*
  • Pensando on negotiating a full stack of IP cores from various vendors, including ARM, Comira, Inphi, CAST, and Broadcom, to support Pensando’s SmartSwitch ASIC development*

*Matter handled prior to joining Latham

Bar Qualification

  • California

Education

  • JD, UC Hastings College of the Law-UC Law SF, 2008
    magna cum laude
  • BA, University of California, San Diego, 1996

Industries