Maya James represents clients in high-stakes commercial litigation and in government enforcement actions across the country. She works with clients big and small in the life sciences, technology, sustainability, and financial services industries, and has experience in state and federal courts, at the trial and appellate levels, and in arbitration. Maya also maintains an active pro bono practice, representing indigent criminal defendants in proceedings to vacate murder convictions secured under a California felony-murder statute that has since been reformed. Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Maya served as a law clerk to Judge Jesus G. Bernal of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Maya earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School and graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in philosophy. While in law school, she worked at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office and taught classes on substantive law and criminal procedure to incarcerated youth at the San Mateo County Youth Services Center. She also served as a course assistant in the Stanford Management Science & Engineering Department where she lectured on topics ranging from the application of Bayesian inference in criminal trials to statistical analysis of discrimination claims. She is a native Spanish speaker.
We represented Scripps Research Institute in its lawsuit against Teva Pharmaceutical regarding Teva’s refusal to pay Scripps hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties it is owed on sales of Mavenclad™ under a Sublicense Agreement, and negotiated a very favorable settlement for Scripps.
We represent a former senior executive of a financial institution in connection with a significant national federal criminal investigation and related regulatory proceedings.
We represented Genentech as the victim of a massive trade secret theft by its former scientists and founders of JHL Biotech, which was developing biosimilar versions of Genentech’s cancer medicines. The Keker team reported the theft to the DOJ and FBI and cooperated with the government’s investigation, which led to the indictment, guilty pleas, and prison time for JHL’s founders and top executives. On the civil side, the team won a preliminary injunction forbidding JHL from commercializing its products. This broad injunction, which rested on a finding that Genentech had a likelihood of success on its trade secret misappropriation claims, led to a settlement with JHL, in which JHL agreed to abandon development of all four of its biosimilars of Genentech’s products, destroy all related cell lines, stipulate to a permanent injunction, fully cooperate with Genentech’s investigation, and reimburse Genentech for its legal fees.
We successfully defended cloud-based telephony and unified messaging provider Dialpad in a patent infringement action brought by competitor RingCentral in the Northern District of California. Dialpad obtained a ruling that all five asserted patents claim ineligible subject matter.
When it came to challenging a controversial felony murder bill that went into effect Jan. 1, 2019, Southern California prosecutors took a harder line than many of their counterparts in the rest of the state. But since November, when the 4th District Court of Appeal published two opinions affirming the validity of SB 1437, the state's largest local prosecutor's office has stopped disputing the bill altogether. Read more
The issues at stake in the case illustrate the growing importance of trade secrets protection to life sciences companies and the IP professionals who serve them. Read more
Genentech reaches a settlement agreement with JHL Biotech, which sees the latter cease development of biosimilars to Genentech’s products. Read more
Taiwan’s JHL Biotech has agreed to stop developing copycat versions of four Genentech biologics as part of a deal to end high-stakes trade secrets litigation. Read more