Luke P. Apfeld

We defended LinkedIn against a nationwide putative class action alleging fraud, unfair competition, false advertising, and other claims arising from allegedly invalid activity on LinkedIn’s ad platform. We won a motion to dismiss the case with prejudice, where the court found that the plaintiffs had failed to plead any viable theory.

We represented Vividion Therapeutics’ founding chemist in knocking out claims alleging that he conspired to divert valuable intellectual property from the company’s $2 billion sale to Bayer. A Vividion investor sued for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, aiding and abetting, and unjust enrichment after one of the scientist’s patents was licensed to a subsequent life sciences startup. The Delaware Chancery Court dismissed the case with prejudice after concluding that the claims were derivative, not direct, and that plaintiffs’ allegations were insufficient to take advantage of an exception to the ordinary rules for derivative claims.

We defeated a class action lawsuit against Google, in which a putative nationwide class of restaurants alleged that Google’s food ordering products violated the Lanham Act and constituted counterfeiting. When granting our motion to dismiss, the court strongly implied that it would consider sanctioning the plaintiffs’ lawyers who had brought the case, identifying them by name in the court’s order. Plaintiffs thereafter dismissed their case with prejudice in exchange for an agreement that Google would not seek sanctions or fees.

We successfully defended Google against putative class action claims that YouTube is rife with copyright infringement and encourages the piracy of uploaded videos by removing copyright management information. The plaintiff, Maria Schneider, was an American composer and jazz orchestra leader, and the class challenged YouTube’s right to immunity under the safe harbor of the DMCA. We were hired three months before the case’s June 2023 trial date. After Judge Donato denied class certification, the KVP team prevailed in two very successful pretrial hearings, which dramatically limited the plaintiffs’ case, excluded their liability expert, and preserved strong licensing defenses for YouTube. The case was successfully resolved soon after.

We won a rare judgment as a matter of law fending off a $450 million trade secret claim against Veeva Systems in New York federal court. Competitor Medidata Solutions sued Veeva alleging that several of its former employees had access to the company’s trade secrets, retained Medidata’s confidential documents, and used that information to unfairly compete with Medidata when they left to join Veeva. We convinced the court that Medidata’s “trade secrets” were vague business concepts at best, that Veeva never used Medidata trade secrets in developing its software, and that no reasonable jury could find in its favor. The Court granted judgment as a matter of law for Veeva at the end of Medidata’s case-in-chief.

We represented a rising star among Northern California high school basketball players in appealing a determination of ineligibility to play during his senior year by the California Interscholastic Federation SAC-Joaquin Section (CIF). The student’s former high school challenged his transfer as “athletically motivated,” which benched our client indefinitely, sabotaging his future educational and athletic opportunities. We successfully overturned the CIF decision and restored our client’s full eligibility to play basketball.