With more than 35 years’ experience handling litigation and counseling matters concerning all aspects of intellectual property, James is co-lead of the firm’s intellectual property practice group, and focuses his practice on patent, trademark, copyright and unfair competition law.
He also handles related advertising, entertainment, publishing, music, computer, internet, domain name and right of publicity issues. His sophisticated approach to counseling intellectual property owners on the scope and validity of their properties has earned him praise from sources such as Managing Intellectual Property, which nominated him as one of the top five intellectual property lawyers in the country and selected his practice group as the best group of its kind in the United States. In 2017, The Legal 500 United States named James as one of the top seven trademark litigators and an elite “leading lawyer,” and in 2019 he was placed in The Legal 500 attorneys Hall of Fame.
Over the course of his career, James has accumulated a client roster that includes the world’s largest retailer, the world’s most well-known investment bank, software companies, hard copy and online publishers, the world’s largest insurance company, the world’s most successful shoe design and distribution conglomerate, the largest company in Africa, the author of the world’s best-selling novel, the most famous environmental and ocean conservation society in the world, the world’s largest advertising company, the world’s largest luxury car manufacturer, well-known hedge funds, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, a Major League Baseball team, the best-selling liquor brand in the country, the largest distributor of vitamins and supplements in the world, as well as manufacturers and distributors of everything from coffee to toys to amusement park rides.
James’ practice spans several areas of the law and he has proven himself an accomplished litigator and transactional lawyer. He has worked on trademark litigations that have defended his clients’ invaluable brands from infringers, and notably, worked on a litigation for AT&T in which the iconic phrases “you have mail” and “instant message/IM” were held generic for the world to use freely.
