Nic Marais

We successfully resolved a defamation and false light case filed against MLB and the Los Angeles Angels. An investigation revealed that Plaintiff Brian “Bubba” Harkins made and supplied a foreign substance intended to give pitchers a competitive advantage. When Harkins was fired, he filed suit seeking millions in damages. The Court found the contested statements to be truthful and granted defendants’ anti-SLAPP motion, dismissing the case and awarding fees. Following an appeal by Harkins, the case settled.

We represented San Francisco real estate broker Victor Makras in a federal criminal trial, which stemmed from a wide-ranging federal investigation of public corruption involving San Francisco city officials. Although the jury found Mr. Makras guilty of a subset of the charges related to a home mortgage refinancing for former Public Utilities Commission President Harlan Kelly, we persuaded the Court to sentence Mr. Makras to serve no jail time and Mr. Makras ultimately paid a minimal fine.

We defended Gerard Williams, a celebrated chip designer, in a case brought by Apple claiming that he breached contractual agreements and misappropriated trade secrets when he founded Nuvia, Inc., a leading-edge microchip company ultimately acquired by Qualcomm. The case was successfully resolved before trial.

We are defending Google in consolidated cases on behalf of a worldwide putative class of mobile device users that are challenging Google’s location-data practices. We obtained a dismissal at the pleading stage of all of plaintiffs’ claims, including a dismissal with prejudice of plaintiffs’ claims for violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

We are defending San Francisco-based Coinbase in a putative class action alleging insider trading and violations of the Commodities Exchange Act and Business & Professions Code Section 17200 in connection with the launch of a new digital currency. We filed a successful motion to dismiss all but one of the Plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice, and in December 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court order denying a motion to compel arbitration of the sole remaining claim in the case and requiring the plaintiffs to individually arbitrate that claim.

During a nine-week trial, we defended the former chief financial officer of a British software company against federal criminal charges accusing our client of alleged accounting fraud, relating to a $11 billion acquisition by a U.S. company.

We represented GoFundMe, one of the world’s leading crowdfunding platforms, in trademark litigation in federal district court in Utah. In pursuing an aggressive defense of GoFundMe’s trademark rights, we filed an early motion for summary judgment asking the federal court to cancel and invalidate the plaintiff’s competing registered mark. Shortly after our motion for summary judgment was filed, the case reached a confidential settlement.

We defended Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) against claims that avatars in its hugely successful Madden NFL franchise used the likenesses of retired NFL players. After litigating an important First Amendment issue in the district court and before the Ninth Circuit, we defeated two successive motions to certify a class, both because plaintiffs’ case presented intractable choice-of-law problems and because, as the court recognized, the right of publicity is inherently an individual right. We prevailed at summary judgment over plaintiffs’ statutory claims. The Court found that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate that “any of the avatars in the Madden games could be ‘readily identified’ as corresponding to any specific plaintiff based on the appearance of the avatars alone.” Not long after, the parties settled.

We served as lead counsel for Comcast in an eight-patent case brought by British Telecom in Delaware federal court. The case targeted Comcast's high speed data and telephony services and video encryption. We also asserted Comcast patents against British Telecom in Texas federal court. In Delaware, we prevailed on six of the eight patents by way of summary judgment and stipulated dismissals, and thereafter reached a very favorable resolution of both litigations.

The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a securities fraud suit in California federal court against our client, a former vice president of sales. The SEC claimed he grossly inflated his company's revenue in order to raise additional capital from investors. We also defended him in a parallel criminal investigation. We were able to prevent any criminal charges from being filed, and resolved the SEC case for a small penalty.

We represented SanDisk in a massive trade secret misappropriation and corporate espionage case. SanDisk, a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, sued competitor SK Hynix for misappropriating approximately ten gigabytes of highly confidential trade secret information and using that information over the course of six years to revamp Hynix’s technology and unfairly compete with SanDisk. We obtained a sweeping preliminary injunction that barred Hynix from any further use or disclosure of stolen SanDisk information, and fought back efforts to dismiss the case, to send it to arbitration, to transfer it overseas, and to remove it from the court that granted the preliminary injunction. Following a series of courtroom victories for our client, the parties reached a confidential settlement and entered into a product supply agreement.