Keker Van Nest & Peters
Firm overview:
Bay Area trial firm, Keker Van Nest & Peters, respected by its peers across the country, handles trade secrets cases on both the plaintiff and defence side. The firm was founded in 1978 by law school classmates Bill Brockett and IP trial bar stalwart John Keker.
The boutique firm is recognised nationally for its success in high-stakes litigation, and, depending on the case, it describes its litigation strategy as either “gutting an opponent’s case through strategic motions, prevailing at trial, or positioning the case for the best possible settlement”.
Keker offers clients advice and counsel on local and international trade secrets cases ranging from alleged wholesale theft of technology, employee mobility, and injunctions, to civil and criminal trials.
The firm represents plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of substantive areas, for clients including companies and individuals in the fields of semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, biotech, software, networking, the internet, and consumer goods.
Team overview:
Multiple Keker partners have experience of trade secrets litigation matters.
Managing partner Laurie Carr Mims is a first-chair trial lawyer with extensive experience litigating complex civil matters. She has created a “unique” practice in the life sciences space representing clients in litigation related to post-merger disputes, trade secret theft, and other complex commercial cases.
Partner Matthew Wedegar is an experienced trial lawyer who is often called upon to assist with high-stakes disputes. He has handled complex intellectual property and civil litigation matters in state and federal courts across the country, and before the International Trade Commission. Wedegar has successfully tried a variety of cases to verdict and won favourable decisions before both state appellate courts and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Former software entrepreneur and management consultant Warren Braunig has particular expertise in issues of trade secret and employee mobility. His clients have included Qualcomm, Google, Roche/Genentech, Western Digital, Williams-Sonoma, Dialpad, and CREXi. Among other prominent wins, Warren successfully defended prominent chip developer and entrepreneur Gerard Williams in trade-secret litigation brought by his former employer, Apple.
Key matters:
- SRS Acquiom v PNC Financial Services Group, Civil Action No. 1:19-cv-02005-DDD-SKC, US District Court for the District Of Colorado, 2019
Warren Braunig and Michelle Ybarra led a Keker team to a 2024 settlement for Denver-based financial transactions software company, SRS Acquiom, in this five-year trade secrets misappropriation case against PNC Bank.
SRS Acquiom created a series of software tools to support companies engaged in M&A transactions. SRS alleged that PNC employed two former SRS employees to direct PNC’s development of a suite of competing products.
The suit stated that the former employees retained and used SRS’s confidential trade secrets at PNC to “unfairly” compete with SRS’s online M&A payments-and-escrow business.
In its representation of SRS, the Keker team undertook two evidentiary hearings, 42 depositions and 630 docket entries.
Partners Ben Rothstein and Katie Lynn Joyce and associates Victor Yu, Luke Apfield, Catherine Porto and Amrutha Dorai, also acted in the case.
Denver firm Ballard Spahr represented PNC Financial Services Group.
Clients:
Cepia, Lam Research, Netflix, SanDisk, SRS Acquiom, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Coherus Biosciences
