Overview
JONATHAN M. ROTTER leads the Firm’s intellectual property litigation practice and has extensive experience in class action litigation, including in the fields of data privacy, digital content, securities, consumer protection, and antitrust. His cases often involve technical and scientific issues, and he excels at the critical skill of understanding and organizing complex subject matter in a way helpful to judges, juries, and ultimately, the firm’s clients. Since joining the firm, he has played a key role in cases recovering over $100 million. He handles cases on contingency, partial contingency, and hourly bases, and works collaboratively with other lawyers and law firms across the country.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Rotter served for three years as the first Patent Pilot Program Law Clerk at the United States District Court for the Central District of California, both in Los Angeles and Orange County. There, he assisted the Honorable S. James Otero, Andrew J. Guilford, George H. Wu, John A. Kronstadt, and Beverly Reid O’Connell with hundreds of patent cases in every major field of technology, from complaint to post-trial motions, advised on case management strategy, and organized and provided judicial education. Mr. Rotter also served as a law clerk for the Honorable Milan D. Smith, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, working on the full range of matters handled by the Circuit.
Before his service to the courts, Mr. Rotter practiced at an international law firm, where he argued appeals at the Federal Circuit, Ninth Circuit, and California Court of Appeal, tried cases, argued motions, and managed all aspects of complex litigation. He also served as a volunteer criminal prosecutor for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.
Mr. Rotter graduated with honors from Harvard Law School in 2004. He served as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, was a Fellow in Law and Economics at the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School, and a Fellow in Justice, Welfare, and Economics at the Harvard University Weatherhead Center For International Affairs. He graduated with honors from the University of California, San Diego in 2000 with a B.S. in molecular biology and a B.A. in music.
Mr. Rotter serves on the Merit Selection Panel for Magistrate Judges in the Central District of California, and served on the Model Patent Jury Instructions and Model Patent Local Rules subcommittees of the American Intellectual Property Law Association. He has written extensively on intellectual property issues, and has been honored for his work with pro bono legal service organizations. He serves on the boards of the Ghana Health and Education Initiative and the American Jewish International Relations Institute. He is admitted to practice in California and before the United States Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Fifth, Ninth and Federal Circuits, the United States District Courts for the Northern, Central, and Southern Districts of California, and the United States Patent & Trademark Office.
Selected Publications and Presentations
9th Circuit Decision Clarifies Securities Fraud Loss Causation Rule, with Ex Kano Sams II, Los Angeles Daily Journal (Feb. 8, 2018)
Damages and Supreme Court Cases at the Federal Circuit: A Coming Collision Over Patent Settlement Licenses?, with William Coats, IP Law 360 (Apr. 3, 2012)
Conflicting Post-Bilski Cases: Classen and CyberSource, with William Coats, IP Law 360 (Sept. 16, 2011)
Federal Circuit’s Latest Restriction on Method Patents, with William Coats, IP Law 360 (Aug. 19, 2011)
What Justice Brandeis Can Teach Us Today, various locations, 2011
Circuit Split on Free Speech and Drug Prescription Data, with Alana Rotter, Los Angeles Daily Journal (Dec. 17, 2010)
The Legacy of Justice Stevens, various locations, 2010
What’s Left of the Twenty-First Amendment?, with Joshua Stambaugh, 6 Cardozo Public Law, Policy, and Ethics Journal 601 (2008)
Patent Licensing After MedImmune, with Paul Gelb, 1 American Health Lawyers Association Life Sciences 8 (2007)
Consumer Protection, Patents, and Procedure: Generic Drug Market Entry and the Need to Reform the Hatch-Waxman Act, with Andrew A. Caffrey III, 9 Virginia Journal of Law and Technology 1 (2004)
Note, Control of the Aftermarket Through Copyright in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, 17 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 307 (2003)