Now Samsung is going after Apple’s lawyers. On Tuesday, in the San Jose federal district court patent suit that started the litigation free-for-all, Quinn Emanuel filed a 20-page motion to disqualify the law firm Bridges & Mavrakakis from representing Apple. The disqualification motion claims that at least five lawyers from the firm, including one who made an appearance in the Apple suit, previously represented Samsung in “substantially related” patent litigation with Ericsson, Spansion, and Dicam while working at Kirkland & Ellis. In fact, Samsung asserts, the then-Kirkland lawyers asserted one of the same patents in the litigation with Ericsson that Samsung asserted in its counterclaims against Apple. [Hat tip to Florian Mueller's FOSS Patents blog.]
“[I]n the course of representing Samsung in connection with such similar factual and legal issues, the Attorneys inevitably learned not only Samsung’s confidential technical and financial information but also highly sensitive litigation tactics and strategies,” the Quinn Emanuel lawyers claim.
