Keker Van Nest & Peters

Firm overview:

Respected San Francisco litigation boutique Keker Van Nest & Peters packs a dispute resolution punch in California, and nationwide, that belies its size. For 40 years, the firm has tried and litigated complex, high-stakes civil and criminal cases throughout the nation.

The firm prides itself on its willingness, and ability, to take on the tough, make-or-break cases, where companies, products and careers depend on the result. This stance naturally leads to the courtroom, or settlement negotiations, where the firm’s trial lawyers are in their element.

Keker Van Nest & Peter helps its clients, leading global innovators and product developers like Google, Genentech and Comcast, deal with IP disputes of every type—patents, trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks.

In patents, the firm has achieved favourable results in high-stakes litigation for, among others, Arista Networks, for Qualcomm before the International Trade Commission, and for SanDisk in separate patent assertion litigations in the District of Delaware and the Northern District of California.

Team overview:

Nationally recognised trial lawyer Robert Van Nest frequently handles high-stakes cases for clients such as Google, Qualcomm, and American Honda. Van Nest’s practice broadly covers complex business litigation and intellectual property. He has tried cases involving patent infringement, securities fraud, trademarks, commercial contracts and antitrust.

Key matters:

• EcoFactor v Google, case number 23-1101, in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Robert Van Nest represents defendant-appellant Google in this case that raised the issue of considering comparable licenses in calculating damages. In September 2024, the Federal Circuit agreed to rehear en banc its split decision affirming the district court’s denial of a new trial on damages.

• X Corp v Adeia, case number 3:23-cv-06151, US District Court for the Northern District of California.

In June 2024, Elon Musk’s X settled a lawsuit with technology licensing company Adeia over a patent licensing dispute, asking the court to pause the case while they finalised the deal. David Silbert, Sharif Jacob and Kristen Lovin from Keker Van Nest & Peters represent X.

Clients:

Arista Networks, Caritas Technologies, ConforMIS, Google, HTC, Qualcomm, Netflix, Roku, SanDisk, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Twitter.