Thor Urness practices complex business litigation, including bet-the-company cases, intellectual property litigation and related counseling. Thor has served as lead trial counsel in commercial litigation that yielded two of Tennessee’s largest jury verdicts, for $26.5 million and $18.8 million, both in favor of his clients. Thor’s practice is generally divided equally between matters in Tennessee and elsewhere.
Business Litigation: Thor represents businesses and individuals in many types of disputes, which have included business torts, insurance coverage, false advertising and consumer protection matters, fraud claims (including healthcare-related False Claims Act cases and securities fraud), government investigations, noncompetition, defamation, civil RICO, contract/UCC, commercial real estate, products liability, class actions, proxy contests, computer performance litigation (i.e., software, hardware and implementation disputes, and automotive supplier disputes.) Intellectual property matters are addressed separately below. This broad base of experience is helpful in obtaining cost-effective results that address cross-company business concerns.
Intellectual Property Litigation: A considerable amount of Thor’s practice is devoted to intellectual property litigation, including trade secrets, trademarks, copyright, patent and unfair competition claims. These matters have included trademark, copyright and patent infringement, false advertising, unfair and deceptive trade practices, trade secrets misappropriation, economic espionage, domain name disputes, meta-tag, keyword advertising and Internet First Amendment claims, and computer hacking and spamming cases. In connection with his intellectual property transactional counseling, Thor has represented companies engaged in e-commerce activities, including software developers, publishers, manufacturers, and marketers, handling issues including entity formation, trademark registrations, licensing, marketing, operating, services, affiliate, development and hosting agreements, web site legal notices, and copyright and privacy matters. He also supervises trademark prosecutions and portfolios for clients and inter partes proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
