Paul Hastings

Firm overview:

Paul Hastings aims to be “the firm of choice” for the most complex, cross-border and international trade secrets counselling, investigations and litigations involving both civil and criminal components. A Big Law peer concurs, describing Paul Hastings—and especially lead partner Jeff Pade—as a “capable law firm” on global trade secrets.

The firm’s trade secrets team manages high-stakes, time-sensitive matters with international components, and has substantial experience litigating, to trial and to appeal, factually intensive trade secrets disputes in diverse technical areas. These matters are highly complex and regularly involve multijurisdictional and cross-border aspects.

Trade secrets experts collaborate with the firm’s cybersecurity experts and electronic discovery and forensics specialists to help detect and tackle misappropriation by insiders and outsiders.

A network of experienced trade secrets lawyers in Asia, Europe, and North America guides clients through complicated matters, dealing with civil misappropriation and criminal theft of trade secrets overseas. Matters involve navigating a choice of law, extraterritoriality, and parallel foreign and domestic trade secret investigations and proceedings.

Team overview:

Paul Hastings has around 36 partners across the firm with significant trade secrets experience—12 partners in the Intellectual Property department; 12 in the Complex Litigation and White Collar departments; and 10 in the Employment department. About 10 partners are active in cross-border and international trade secrets matters. Another 100-plus attorneys have trade secrets experience.

With the retirement of the highly esteemed Victoria Cundiff, Jeff Pade is the key trade secrets partner at the firm. Pade is recognised by senior actors in the field as a leading trade secrets lawyer. He is an intellectual property litigator with more than 25 years of experience in all phases of trade secrets and other intellectual property disputes.

Pade directs complex civil and criminal trade secrets litigations concerning diverse technologies for clients around the globe, and represents clients in internal trade secrets audits and related forensic investigations, as well as trade secrets compliance initiatives. He is a frequent speaker and author on trade secrets issues, and is an active member of the Sedona Conference’s working group on trade secrets. He teaches Trade Secrets Law at The George Washington University Law School.

In March 2024, Palo Alto partner Lisa Nguyen joined Paul Hastings’ Intellectual Property team from Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman). Nguyen represents cutting-edge technology companies in IP matters, particularly in litigation against non-practising entities.

Key matters:

• Paul Hastings investigated what looked like a routine internal misappropriation. The firm’s computer forensic work revealed an elaborate overseas theft of significant repositories of key source code, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The trade secrets team, including Jeff Pade, successfully negotiated a plea agreement with the US Department of Justice for an overseas client’s liability for trade secret theft and obstruction of justice charges, while simultaneously negotiating a settlement agreement with the aggrieved plaintiff for related trade secrets misappropriation.

This result was secured just before a parallel US criminal trial, and followed a foreign criminal investigation, multiple US and overseas lawsuits, a US civil trade secrets trial, and multiple US civil appeals.

• In another matter, Paul Hastings successfully planned and executed a complex internal investigation in multiple jurisdictions to mitigate civil and criminal trade secrets liability, both in the US and overseas.
• Paul Hastings represents Daiichi Sankyo in a multi-fora life sciences breach of contract, trade secrets and related IP dispute concerning the client’s biotech cancer drugs. The dispute includes a multibillion dollar arbitration, a post-grant review proceeding, and several district court litigations, including a pending challenge against the US government.

Paul Hastings delivered a resounding win for Daiichi Sankyo in what has been reported to be one of the largest ever international arbitrations with a valuation of more than $70 billion. The 10-partner, multi-disciplinary, multi-office Paul Hastings team included Jeff Pade in Washington, DC, covering trade secrets.

Clients:

AbbVie, Afiniti, Allergan, bluebird bio, Daiichi Sankyo, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, SuperCooler Technologies, Viking Therapeutics.