Our first runners-up this week are LOTW regulars Adam Alper and Mike De Vries of Kirkland & Ellis who kept their impressive streak of trial wins running with a plaintiff-side victory in a trade secret trial in federal court. Jurors in Oakland, California last week handed their client LivePerson Inc. a $30 million trade secret verdict in a showdown with 24[7].ai, the company’s competitor and sometimes business partner in the field of AI-based customer engagement. Jurors found that 24[7].ai misappropriated all 15 LivePerson trade secrets in the case—mostly rules for operating chat engines for specific customers and the data generated by them. The Kirkland trial team also included Sharre Lotfollahi, Sierra Elizabeth, Josh Simmons, Ben Herbert, and Kristen Reichenbach.
The pair, who handle all their trials together, previously took home Litigator of the Week honors in April for scoring a complete defense win for network security company Apcon in patent litigation brought by rival Gigamon in the Eastern District of Texas. They previously were named Litigators of the Week alongside partner Gianni Cutri in October 2020 for winning an $855 million trade secret jury verdict for Cognizant Technology Solutions in New York federal court.
