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Jamie Slaughter is a first-chair trial lawyer with a broad and diverse high-stakes civil litigation practice. A testament to his versatility as a litigator, Jamie has successfully represented a mosaic of clients—OpenAI, The Scripps Research Institute, Electronic Arts, Lyft, Lance Armstrong, Black Knight, and several prominent law firms—in a wide range of matters including breach of contract, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, antitrust, professional negligence, copyright, trademark, right of publicity, and employee classification cases.

He brings a creative and pragmatic approach to problem solving, excels in tough negotiations, and appreciates that often clients prefer a prompt resolution before disputes mature into protracted litigation.

Along with a team of Keker attorneys, Jamie is representing OpenAI in connection with a series of copyright lawsuits that will establish the boundaries of fair use as applied to machine learning. He recently won summary judgment for The Scripps Research Institute and two award-winning chemists to beat back a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled venture capitalist. And he also recently won a jury verdict vindicating former Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick who was wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle on misconduct.

Jamie has a developed a specialty practice representing video game and interactive entertainment software companies in protecting their intellectual property interests and beating back attempts to block games from market release. He has defended Electronic Arts Inc. against several right-of-publicity class actions related to the alleged use of athletes’ names and likenesses, against putative consumer class action challenges to loot boxes and dynamic difficulty features, and against copyright or trade secret claims.

Jamie also has significant experience representing sharing economy companies in employment classification disputes. He has represented Lyft in putative class actions alleging that drivers who use Lyft’s technology platform should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. He currently represents Lyft in numerous post-Dynamex and post-AB5 class actions, PAGA actions, and arbitrations, including defending Lyft in the much-publicized action brought by the California Attorney General (as well as the District Attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego) as well as a separate action brought against Lyft by the California Labor Commissioner. He has successfully compelled many cases to individual arbitration and won other early motions that narrowed the scope of the cases. He has also obtained final approval of multiple class and PAGA settlements in court.

Jamie also regularly defends national law firms and their partners against claims of alleged malpractice. 

Jamie devotes substantial time to pro bono matters as well as to several community-based organizations. He serves on the boards of directors of the Tipping Point Community and the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, and is a former mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Police Commission.

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Jamie Slaughter is a first-chair trial lawyer with a broad and diverse high-stakes civil litigation practice. A testament to his versatility as a litigator, Jamie has successfully represented a mosaic of clients—OpenAI, The Scripps Research Institute, Electronic Arts, Lyft, Lance Armstrong, Black Knight, and several prominent law firms—in a wide range of matters including breach of contract, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, antitrust, professional negligence, copyright, trademark, right of publicity, and employee classification cases.

He brings a creative and pragmatic approach to problem solving, excels in tough negotiations, and appreciates that often clients prefer a prompt resolution before disputes mature into protracted litigation.

Along with a team of Keker attorneys, Jamie is representing OpenAI in connection with a series of copyright lawsuits that will establish the boundaries of fair use as applied to machine learning. He recently won summary judgment for The Scripps Research Institute and two award-winning chemists to beat back a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled venture capitalist. And he also recently won a jury verdict vindicating former Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick who was wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle on misconduct.

Jamie has a developed a specialty practice representing video game and interactive entertainment software companies in protecting their intellectual property interests and beating back attempts to block games from market release. He has defended Electronic Arts Inc. against several right-of-publicity class actions related to the alleged use of athletes’ names and likenesses, against putative consumer class action challenges to loot boxes and dynamic difficulty features, and against copyright or trade secret claims.

Jamie also has significant experience representing sharing economy companies in employment classification disputes. He has represented Lyft in putative class actions alleging that drivers who use Lyft’s technology platform should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. He currently represents Lyft in numerous post-Dynamex and post-AB5 class actions, PAGA actions, and arbitrations, including defending Lyft in the much-publicized action brought by the California Attorney General (as well as the District Attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego) as well as a separate action brought against Lyft by the California Labor Commissioner. He has successfully compelled many cases to individual arbitration and won other early motions that narrowed the scope of the cases. He has also obtained final approval of multiple class and PAGA settlements in court.

Jamie also regularly defends national law firms and their partners against claims of alleged malpractice. 

Jamie devotes substantial time to pro bono matters as well as to several community-based organizations. He serves on the boards of directors of the Tipping Point Community and the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, and is a former mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Police Commission.

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OpenAI Copyright Cases

OpenAI tapped Keker as lead trial counsel in a series of copyright lawsuits that will establish the boundaries of copyright fair use as applied to machine learning. The cases include claims brought by newspapers, authors, and other media outlets alleging that the training and outputs of generative AI large language models infringe their works.

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Calrke v. Vu

We defended The Scripps Research Institute and two award-winning chemists against a lawsuit brought by a venture capital firm partner who alleged he had entered into an oral joint venture agreement to develop and commercialize groundbreaking carbon-hydrogen activation technology. After nearly 18 months of litigation, the court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants, delivering a complete victory.

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FTC v. Intercontinental Exchange and Black Knight

We represented Black Knight in a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission attempting to block Intercontinental Exchange’s acquisition of Black Knight as allegedly anticompetitive. Intercontinental Exchange (the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange) entered into an agreement to acquire Black Knight, which provides software, data and analytics to the real estate and housing finance markets, for $13.1 billion. Following certain divestiture agreements, we convinced the FTC to drop its suit and allow the merger to proceed.

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Kirkpatrick v. The City of Oakland

We represented former Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick in a wrongful termination and retaliation lawsuit following her termination by the City of Oakland. For nearly three years, Chief Kirkpatrick raised a series of alarms about misconduct by the Oakland Police Commission. Following a two-week trial, a San Francisco federal jury found that Chief Kirkpatrick was wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle on the Police Commission’s misconduct.

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People of the State of California v. Lyft

We are defending Lyft against a lawsuit filed by California's attorney general and a group of city attorneys which claims that Lyft misclassified drivers as independent contractors, under California's Assembly Bill 5. Before the California Court of Appeal, we secured a stay of an injunction the Court entered against Lyft. During the pendency of the appeal, California’s Proposition 22 passed, confirming contractor status for Lyft drivers.

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The Brandr Group v. Electronic Arts

Representing Electronic Arts, we secured the dismissal of a lawsuit by The Brandr Group, which claimed EA was circumventing its agreements with dozens of Division I schools by offering group name, image, and likeness licensing deals directly to football players. After we defeated a TRO petition, The Brandr Group withdrew its lawsuit, paving the way toward a summer 2024 release of a new college football video game for the first time since 2013.

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United States ex rel. Landis v. Tailwind Sports, et al.

We represented Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong in settling a False Claims Act case brought by a former teammate and joined in by the United States. The Postal Service and Floyd Landis had sought $100 million in damages from Armstrong, but in light of several significant court rulings rejecting and limiting the plaintiffs’ damages theories, the case settled for $5 million. Our prior representation of Armstrong resulted in the closing of a federal criminal investigation without charges being filed.

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Keller v. Electronic Arts Inc. et al

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.

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Lepore v. Molekule

We defended Molekule, a leading air purifier company, in a consumer class action filed in the Eastern District of New York alleging that Molekule’s advertising is false and misleading, among other claims. We successfully moved to compel individual arbitration and stayed the case before plaintiffs could seek any discovery.

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Zajonc v. Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) was sued by a purported class of gamers who claimed that EA’s FIFA, Madden and NHL games fraudulently include artificial intelligence technologies that dynamically adjust game play difficulty such that outcomes of games change. Through a creative and aggressive litigation strategy, we secured dismissal of the suit before our response brief was due.

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Ramirez v. Electronic Arts Inc.

We successfully defended Electronic Arts in a recent class action targeting its sports games, FIFA and Madden NFL, including a “loot box” challenge claiming that the Ultimate Teams feature constitutes illegal gambling.

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Venture Capital Firm v. Music Publishing Group

We represented online file-sharing company investors against allegations of copyright infringement, and asserted counterclaims of antitrust violations. After we used crime fraud arguments to pierce the plaintiff's attorney-client privilege, the case settled on favorable terms.

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United States v. Former Chief Executive Officer

We represented the former CEO of a public company in a criminal investigation, a Securities and Exchange Commission suit, a derivative shareholder suit, a breach of contract suit by our client against his former company, and that company's counterclaim for hundreds of millions. All of these matters were related to the company's historical stock option granting practices. We resolved all of the matters against our client with net payments of more than $10 million to our client.

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Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Justice and Shareholders v. Former Chief Executive Officer

We represented the former CEO of an antivirus software company in investigations by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, a shareholder derivative lawsuit, and an arbitration arising out of an investigation into the company’s stock option granting process. The government took no action against our client, who also reached a favorable confidential settlement with his former company.

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