Paul Hastings

Firm overview:

Companies in crisis mode on trade secrets issues turn to Paul Hastings, which is noted as one of the leading authorities in the area by peers. The practice is frequently called upon to handle high-stakes, time-sensitive trade secrets matters, drawing on its network of experienced lawyers in Asia, Europe and the US to navigate trade secrets investigations and proceedings for clients around the world.

Paul Hastings’ trade secrets team assists clients in identifying and protecting their most valuable confidential data, and aggressively prosecutes and defends against cases of alleged data theft. The firm’s multidisciplinary practice, which includes cybersecurity experts and electronic discovery and forensics specialists, is also highly adept at detecting and handling misappropriation by insiders and outsiders.

The litigation team, led by Jeff Pade, takes on challenging and intricate trade secrets disputes in diverse technical areas, sometimes involving parallel civil and criminal components in the US and abroad for both companies and individuals. Clients for trade secrets work include Samsung Electronics, Viking Therapeutics and L’Oréal.

Team overview:

Paul Hastings’ trade secrets expertise is found across 13 of its offices, throughout the US as well as Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and London. The firm has a large number of partners with trade secrets experience within its litigation, employment, white-collar, and IP departments, who regularly collaborate on disputes.

Washington, DC partner Jeff Pade has over 25 years’ experience in IP disputes and specialises in challenging trade secrets matters. Pade directs complex and high stakes civil and criminal trade secrets litigations for clients around the world, and is recognised by senior actors in the field as a leading trade secrets lawyer. A peer notes his high involvement in international trade secrets matters. Recent trade secrets clients include Samsung Electronics, AbbVie, Joby, Third Rock Ventures, Daiichi Sankyo, and Viking Therapeutics.

Key matters:

• Viking Therapeutics: ITC and district court trade secrets dispute

In a first-of-its-kind, bet-the-company litigation, Paul Hastings achieved a precedent-setting win for longtime client Viking Therapeutics in a Section 337 ITC investigation against Chinese entities accused of misappropriating hundreds of Viking trade secrets on pharmaceutical formulations and clinical/preclinical information for Viking’s drug to treat non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

Defendants/respondents accessed Viking’s trade secrets when evaluating a potential business collaboration with Viking, and then, after not moving forward on the collaboration, disclosed Viking’s trade secrets in patent publications and improperly used them to accelerate a directly competing drug product. After two trials before the ITC, Paul Hastings halted the defendant’s ongoing clinical trials through a cease-and-desist order and a seven-year limited exclusion order.

Viking will now seek additional equitable and monetary relief through its parallel federal action in the District Court for the Southern District of California, which had been stayed during the ITC investigation.

Paul Hasting’s team consisted of partners Eric Dittmann (New York), Jeff Pade (Washington, DC), Kecia Reynolds (Washington, DC), Isaac Ashkenazi (New York), and Bruce Wexler (New York); and associates Brandon Howell (Washington, DC), Zachary Hadd (New York), Richard Rothman (Washington, DC), Summer Stevens (Chicago), Josh Lopez (Washington, DC) and Cheron Mims (Chicago).

• SuperCooler: Trade secrets dispute with The Coca-Cola Company and overseas actors

Paul Hastings represents SuperCooler Technologies in a trade secrets dispute with Coca-Cola. SuperCooler has invented several technologies that rapidly cool beverages to below their freezing temperatures while maintaining them in a liquid state (known as a “supercooled” state). The company alleges that Coca-Cola induced it into a partnership to commercialise these technologies but never truly intended to work together to develop them. Instead, SuperCooler claims that Coca-Cola wrongfully disclosed its trade secrets, filed copycat patents publicising them, hid the patent filings from SuperCooler, and secretly conspired with multiple foreign manufacturers and distributors to usurp SuperCooler’s IP and business opportunities.

In a Northern District of Georgia action, Coca-Cola alleges that SuperCooler failed to repay a loan intended to help it scale up its manufacturing capabilities so that SuperCooler could manufacture the technologies for its partnership with Coca-Cola.

The Washington, DC-based team for SuperCooler includes partners Brad Bondi and Jeff Pade, of counsel Michael Wheatley, and associates Michael Wolfe and Alexa Lowman.

• Daiichi Sankyo: Trade secrets and patent disputes with Seagen

The team represented Daiichi Sankyo in a hotly contested, complex commercial dispute concerning Daiichi Sankyo’s trade secrets and know-how for biotech drugs that are transforming the standard of care for treating patients suffering from breast and gastric cancers. US company Seagen filed an American Arbitration Association (AAA) demand against Daiichi Sankyo, the largest pharmaceutical company in Japan by market capital.

Paul Hastings obtained a complete victory for Daiichi Sankyo. Seagen claimed that Daiichi Sankyo misappropriated trade secrets and know-how in the course of a prior collaboration, and sought over $1 billion in damages, over $26 billion in royalties, and tens of billions more in continuing lifetime royalties, as well as ownership of numerous patent rights and drugs.

An arbitrator rejected all of Seagen’s claims and awarded the client over $45 million in fees and costs—one of the largest known such awards in an international commercial arbitration. The award was later confirmed by a district judge, who also awarded prejudgment interest of around $869,000, plus additional post-judgment interest.

Handling this high-profile dispute was a team comprising partners Preston Ratliff (New York), Jeff Pade (Washington, DC), Naveen Modi (Washington, DC), Isaac Ashkenazi (New York), Kurt Hansson (New York), Igor Timofeyev (Washington, DC) and Ashley Mays-Williams (New York); of counsel Dana Weir (New York); and associates Amanda Pober (New York), Krystina Ho (New York), Beau Stockstill (Orange County), Kyotaro Ozawa (Tokyo), and Justin Fleischacker (New York).

Clients:

Afiniti, bluebird bio, Daiichi Sankyo, Joby Aero, SuperCooler Technologies, Viking Therapeutics