Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs
Gregg LoCascio, Paul Brinkman, Kristina Cary, Sean McEldowney, Steven Dirks, Peter Evangelatos, Diva Hollis, Tiffany Knapp, Karthik Ravishankar and Tera Stone were recognized as runners-up for The American Lawyer Litigation Daily’s “Litigator of the Week” contest for their work for iRobot. Matt Owen, Erin Cady and Megan McGlynn were also recognized as runners-up for their work for Tenaris Coiled Tubes LLC.
... A Kirkland & Ellis team led by Gregg LoCascio lands a runner-up spot for getting a key win for Roomba maker iRobot in a showdown at the U.S. International Trade Commission with rival Shark. After a one-week remote trial in January, Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara last week sided with iRobot finding its patents covering carpet detection and auto-docking valid and infringed by Shark. The ALJ recommended an exclusion order barring Shark from importing or selling products with the patented features in the U.S. The Kirkland team representing iRobot also included partners Paul Brinkman, Kristina Cary, Anders Fjellstedt and Sean McEldowney; and associates Steven Dirks, Peter Evangelatos, Diva Hollis, Tiffany Knapp, Karthik Ravishankar and Tera Jo Stone. (Fjellstedt has taken an in-house position at Disney since the trial and both Knapp and Ravishankar have been promoted as partners.)
... Runners-up honors also go to a separate Kirkland team led by Matt Owen, Erin Cady and Megan McGlynn that represents Tenaris Coiled Tubes LLC, a maker of quench-and-tempered coiled tubing used in oil exploration, in litigation with rival Global Tubing LLC. Tenaris brought patent claims against Global and Global, in turn, brought antitrust claims alleging Tenaris obtained its patents by fraud, and is attempting to assert them to monopolize the market. Last week U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison in Houston granted Tenaris summary judgment on Global’s Sherman Act claims after oral argument. The judge held it would be legal error to allow Global’s antitrust claim to proceed based on evidence that a third player in the market, Quality, would continue to hold the largest market share and Global couldn’t show that Tenaris intends to assert its patents against Quality.
