IP Litigation

We practice at the intersection of law and technology, combining extensive technological knowledge with experienced trial advocacy in patent law. We have nearly 100 U.S. PTO-registered lawyers, agents, and technology specialists, and the majority of our patent litigators have technical backgrounds or experience. We cover virtually every technology with professionals in the electrical, software, mechanical, chemical, and pharmaceutical disciplines, among others. We regularly litigate in the leading U.S. patent venues, including the Federal Circuit, the International Trade Commission, the Eastern District of Texas, the District of Delaware, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Western District of Wisconsin, the Northern District of Illinois, and the Central and the Northern Districts of California. We litigate IP matters in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, Australia, and Asia. Moreover, we feature a sophisticated inter partes and ex partes practice in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

We have broad-based experience in all phases of patent infringement litigation, including developing overall strategy for both patent holders and accused infringers, pursuing and defending preliminary injunctions, conducting discovery across the world, coordinating multi-country judicial and administrative proceedings, and arguing before the Federal Circuit. We excel in presenting complex technical matters to juries, using the latest jury persuasion techniques and employing state-of-the-art technology.

K&L Gates manages the worldwide trademark portfolios for a number of our large clients, overseeing the protection and enforcement of our clients’ trademark rights internationally. Our efforts regularly involve seizures and preliminary injunctions and trials across the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Many of these cases involve preliminary injunctions. We have extensive experience with motions for preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders in the context of a variety of trademark, service mark, certification marks, and trade dress matters. We have brought numerous ex parte seizure actions as part of a well-developed anti-counterfeiting program for one of our entertainment clients.

We routinely prosecute and defend claims involving both registered and unregistered trademarks and service marks, as well as a wide variety of trade dress and advertising claims. We do so in all of the typical forums for resolving these types of disputes, including the federal courts, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, state courts, and a variety of alternative dispute resolution settings. With the help of a comprehensive list of counsel with whom we have had prior relationships, we also have pursued and defended trademark and service mark claims in numerous jurisdictions around the world.

Our lawyers have developed significant experience in the area of anti-counterfeiting. Our experience is most prominent in representing sports and entertainment clients, as well as clients involved in clothing, motion pictures, chemicals, and food and beverages. As a result, we have developed an extensive, cutting-edge federal court practice under the Trademark Counterfeiting Act of 1984 and other portions of the Lanham Act, the Copyright Act, and other pertinent federal and state laws in the United States as well as under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), the Trade Marks Act, and related legislation in the United Kingdom.

Our lawyers handle infringement litigation involving computer programs, literary works, sound recordings, musical compositions, works of art and design, architectural works, luxury goods, and many other protectable works. We also are experienced in litigating the often complex issues surrounding disputes involving authorship, ownership, works for hire, copyrightability, originality, and fair use.

In connection with litigating copyright issues that have arisen in the context of the Internet, we are well versed in the details of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States and the Copyright Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) and related legislation in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Although the provisions of these laws are detailed, we know the ins and outs of the law and use it to help our clients. For example, our lawyers frequently use the take-down provisions of the DMCA, the CDPA, the U.K. Electronic Commerce Regulations, and the Australian Copyright Act to circumvent infringers altogether and force Internet Service Providers to remove or block access to infringing material. We have extensive experience in cross-border litigation, including parallel importing (gray market) claims.

K&L Gates can mobilize at a moment’s notice to protect or defend against claims of trade secret misappropriation for clients in virtually every sector of the economy. We frequently litigate trade secret matters involving our clients’ most important assets at the injunction stage and through trial. Our cases have involved trade secrets both of a technical nature (such as computer programs, mill-building technology, and computer networking technology used to enable Internet traffic) and of a non-technical nature (such as business, marketing and financial information, and customer lists). Our trade secret litigation clients range from Fortune 100 companies to foreign start-ups.

The vast majority of intellectual property assets consists of compilations of confidential information that are not subject to the protections of patent, copyright, or trademark laws. Instead, these assets are protected under the body of trade secret law that gives the owner of that information certain rights to prevent its use or disclosure, so long as that owner can demonstrate that the information is in fact a trade secret. In the United States, the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which may criminalize certain aspects of trade secret law, can raise the stakes in trade secret litigation beyond just the parties' economic interests.