Matan Shacham

We represent Qualcomm in a case brought by the FTC alleging that Qualcomm had failed to license its standard-essential patents at fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) royalty rates and that Qualcomm had engaged in exclusionary conduct that increased its competitors’ costs and reduced their ability and incentive to innovate. Following a month-long bench trial, the district court issued an injunction that would have forced Qualcomm to license rival chip suppliers and renegotiate its existing licenses with cellphone makers. In August of 2020 the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment and vacated the injunction.

We represent Qualcomm with respect to claims brought by a putative class of 250 million cellphone users alleging that Qualcomm inflated mobile device prices through its standard-essential patent licensing practices. We successfully overturned a nationwide class certification order before the Ninth Circuit and eliminated much of the case on a subsequent motion to dismiss.

We represented a law firm and individual attorneys in a highly contentious and complicated case brought by a developer alleging legal malpractice claims against our clients, along with numerous claims against a large group of other individuals and companies involved in a real estate joint venture. We executed an aggressive defense strategy, using early discovery and motion practice, to quickly extricate our clients from the dispute. We secured dismissal for waiver of costs for all the individual attorneys and a favorable early settlement for the law firm.

We led an industry-wide joint defense group through a 7-day jury trial in the Eastern District of Texas. Ericsson asserted 5 patents that it claimed read on the 802.11 wifi standard, and it sued a large number of companies with products that used wifi, including laptop and wireless router companies. We won a non-infringement verdict on two of the patents in suit and limited the damages award for the remaining three patents. On appeal to the Federal Circuit, we were able to further narrow the verdict. The remaining patents were ultimately defeated on IPR.

We defended the former CEO of Fannie Mae in an SEC action filed in the Southern District of New York related to Fannie Mae’s disclosures regarding its exposure to “subprime” and “Alt-A” residential mortgages. We secured a favorable settlement for our client shortly before trial.

We secured summary judgment for our client, the former Chairman of a biotech start-up company that tried to develop and commercialize an islet-cell suspension treatment for people with insulin-dependent diabetes. The lawsuit was brought by the company’s former CEO and certain shareholders against the company’s officers, directors, and creditors and sought over $100 million in damages.

We defended Facebook against a group of plaintiffs seeking to establish a new right under the California constitution’s free speech clause to force companies operating social media platforms to publish anti-vaccine posts. In November 2018, we won a ruling striking the complaint under California’s Anti-SLAPP statute.

We secured a favorable settlement for Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) in this groundbreaking antitrust and right of publicity class action. Current and former student-athletes claimed EA improperly used the athletes’ likenesses and biographical information in its NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball video games.

We defended a former Citigroup executive in one of the rare financial crisis cases to go to trial. Our client worked on the structuring desk at Citigroup and was charged with securities fraud in connection with Citigroup’s 2007 marketing of a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation (CDO) backed by assets tied to the housing market. After a two week trial in the Southern District of New York, a jury rejected the SEC’s case and found our client not liable on any of the SEC’s claims.

On behalf of Broadcom, we led a joint-defense group of wireless chip manufacturers, PC manufacturers, and cellular network carriers. The plaintiff, CSIRO, asserted patent claims that allegedly covered a wide variety of products that offer wireless functionality under the IEEE 802.11 standard for local area networks. We settled the case favorably on the eve of trial.