Our first runners-up this week are Robert Maldonado and his team at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks who defended fashion designer Thom Browne at trial against trademark claims from sportswear giant Adidas over his use of four horizontal stripes in certain items of luxury casualwear. As we noted in yesterday’s column, federal jurors in Manhattan deliberated less than two hours last week before finding no trademark infringement or trademark dilution of Adidas’ three-stripe mark. The Wolf Greenfield team also included John Strand, Tonia Sayour, John Welch, Bryan Conley, Aya Cieslak-Tochigi, Quincy Kayton, Kira McCarthy and Marie McKiernan. The team worked closely with Harley Lewin of Lewin Consult.
Runners-up honors also go to Susman Godfrey partner Joseph Grinstein and his co-counsel, Johnny Ward of Ward, Smith & Hill, for landing a $166.3 million verdict for Finesse Wireless in patent infringement litigation against AT&T and Nokia. After a week-long trial and just three hours of deliberations, a federal jury in Marshall, Texas last week found both Finesse patents related to wireless networks infringed and valid, and awarded the full lump sum royalty amount requested. The trial team also included Susman Godfrey partners Meng Xi and Shawn Blackburn, associate Meg Griffith, of counsel Bryce Barcelo, and Ward, Smith & Hill partner Andrea Fair, with additional pretrial counsel from Calvin Capshaw of Capshaw DeRieux.
