Andy Monach is Senior Counsel in the firm’s Intellectual Property Group. Mr. Monach has a trial and appellate litigation and arbitration practice, with special emphasis on patent litigation and other disputes involving complex technology. He has tried several complex fraud cases, disputes between electric utilities and independent power producers, securities and fiduciary duty litigation and other commercial disputes. Mr. Monach advises and represents clients concerning display technology, consumer electronics, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, e-commerce, biotechnology, chemical, and medical device patents, software development, software copyright infringement, and technology licensing. His clients range from small companies to large multinational corporations.
Mr. Monach’s patent litigation experience includes a number of high-profile cases involving plasma display technology. He was part of the team that represented plaintiff Pioneer Corporation against Samsung SDI in patent infringement cases in the Eastern District of Texas. He led the successful defense that resulted in the pretrial dismissal of all four Samsung patent infringement counterclaims and then was part of the Pioneer trial team that obtained a jury verdict finding Samsung SDI liable for $59 million in damages and willful infringement. Mr. Monach also recently represented Hitachi Plasma Patent Licensing (HPPL) and a number of Hitachi affiliates in patent infringement suits against LG Electronics (LGE) in the Eastern District of Texas. After defeating LGE’s efforts to consolidate its countersuits with HPPL’s infringement action and receiving a favorable claim construction ruling, he helped to negotiate a settlement of several pending infringement cases. Mr. Monach also successfully defended Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in a high-stakes patent suit involving hard disk drive technology, obtaining a summary judgment of non-infringement.
Mr. Monach also focuses on creating cost-effective opportunities to favorably resolve cases short of trial. For example, in defending Aspect Software in a patent infringement case, he helped Aspect identify and acquire patents that could be asserted in a countersuit. Shortly after the countersuit was filed, the parties entered into an amicable long-term settlement. For Shutterfly, a leading online digital imaging company, Mr. Monach developed an efficient strategy to move a case out of the courtroom and into arbitration, obtaining a complete victory for Shutterfly within a matter of months.
Mr. Monach received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1976. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979. Mr. Monach became an associate at Morrison & Foerster in 1979 and became a partner in the firm in 1985. From November 1984 to March 1985, he served as a Deputy Public Defender trying serious felony cases in the San Francisco Public Defender’s office.
From 2006-2013, Mr. Monach has been selected as a Northern California Super Lawyer in Intellectual Property Litigation.
