Sharif E. Jacob

We represented Sutter Health in defeating a qui tam action alleging violation of California's Insurance Frauds Prevention Act in a case related to charges for health care services. Following a seven-week bench trial, we obtained a complete victory. The judge ruled that there was no fraud, that Sutter charged for recovery room care that was “medically ordered, appropriate, and supervised,” and that Sutter’s charges were consistent with standard industry billing practices.

We represented Instacart in a copyright lawsuit against Cornershop, a grocery-delivery company Uber purchased for $500 million. Cornershop launched its U.S. operations in Texas and Florida to compete with Instacart, using Instacart’s copyrighted images, which Cornershop scraped from Instacart’s website. After Instacart filed a complaint alleging claims under the Copyright Act, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, The Texas Harmful Access to Computers Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Cornershop stipulated to a comprehensive permanent injunction under which the company agreed not to scrape, display, publish, reproduce, or distribute any copies or derivatives of any of Instacart’s copyrighted images.

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.

After a non-practicing entity brought a patent-infringement lawsuit against our clients, we took advantage of the newly establish inter partes review procedure to invalidate 23 claims before the Patent & Trademark Office. On appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, we successfully defended the PTO’s decision to invalidate those claims. We also brought a successful cross-appeal, convincing the Federal Circuit to reverse the PTO’s decision not to invalidate a few remaining claims, securing a total victory for our clients.

Straight Path filed suit at the ITC under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, accusing Toshiba, LG, Vizio, Sony, and others of importing devices that infringe three Straight Path patents covering network-communication technology. We represented Netflix, whose technology had been accused, throughout the action. Weeks before trial, Toshiba retained us to try the matter. Shortly thereafter, Straight Path abandoned the investigation by unilaterally withdrawing its complaint.

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.

We defended our clients Netflix, Inc. and Roku Corporation in a U.S. International Trade Commission complaint filed by Rovi Corporation. The complaint accused our clients, along with Mitsubishi Electric Corp., LG Electronics Inc., and Vizio Inc., of infringing several patents related to interactive program guides. The complaint sought an order banning television and media-player makers from entering the U.S. By the time of the trial, the other defendants had settled and our clients faced four patents. We successfully defended our clients at trial, with the ALJ finding one of the patents invalid and none of the patents infringed, as well as no actionable importation or available remedy. The ITC confirmed there was no violation. Rovi then pursued the matter in District Court with three of the same patents used in the ITC investigation as well as two additional patents. We won summary judgment of invalidity under Alice on all five asserted patents, which the Federal Circuit affirmed summarily.

We served as lead counsel for HTC, a Taiwan-based manufacturer of handheld devices, in its battle with Apple over smartphone technology. Apple first sued HTC in district court and before the International Trade Commission (ITC), claiming our client had infringed 20 patents related to various computer-related technologies, including user interfaces, operating systems, power management, and digital signal processing. The ITC hearing that went to decision resulted in a favorable ruling, and HTC obtained a settlement to become the first Android handset maker licensed by Apple.

We represented evYsio Medical Devices in asserting patents for its cardiac stent technology. Prior to jury selection, the case became part of a global settlement between Medtronic and Abbott. Our client, the inventor of several stents in the suit, received $42 million as part of the settlement.

We represented M&H Realty Partners in a multi-million dollar breach of indemnification agreement and tort action against Aerojet and Boeing. The case concerned environmental contamination in Fullerton, California.

We represented a prisoner in a civil rights suit against three correctional officers who beat him in Pelican Bay State Prison and one officer who failed to intervene to stop the beating. After the plaintiff's case survived summary judgment, the federal court asked us to step in and represent him at trial. Following a five-day trial and five hours of jury deliberation, the defendants settled the case for nearly twice the number the plaintiff presented to the jury.