Partner, Friedland Cianfrani LLP
Mike has three decades of IP enforcement experience. He has represented clients in more than 270 intellectual property cases in state and federal courts in California and 23 other states and before the Trademark Trials and Appeals Board.
Mike’s practice includes patent, trademark, trade secret, and copyright cases. His cases have spanned a wide range of industries and technologies, including consumer products, semiconductors, tactical products, medical devices, computer software, apparel, restaurants, and financial services. He has represented brand-name companies including Oakley, Luxottica, Tesla, 5.11 Tactical, ITT, Makita, Pacific Life Insurance Company, Carl’s Jr., Microsemi, NASCAR, Daytona International Speedway, Game Show Network, Razor, Volcom, Specialized Bicycle, Mexicana Airlines, and SRS Labs, among others.
Mike was a partner at Knobbe Martens for more than two decades. At Knobbe, Mike served as co-chair of the Litigation Department. He had previously served as co-chair of the Trademark/Brand Protection group and the Consumer Products practice group.
World Trademark Review 1000 has several times named Mike a “Leading Trademark Lawyer." In the 2022 edition, WTR 1000 commended him for his “advanced state of preparedness,” and included a client remark that, “there’s nothing he hasn’t seen.”
In the 2021 edition, WTR described him as a “backbone of [his former firm's] litigation practice,” and noted his ability to litigate “cases associated with all categories of IP rights.”
In the 2020 edition, WTR described him as having been “on the cutting edge of enforcement for three decades.” In that edition, a client said he was “a sophisticated and thoughtful professional who understands how to get things done.”
In 2023, Legal 500 named Mike to its list of preeminent patent litigators. Thompson/Reuters has regularly named him a “Southern California Super Lawyer” in the category of IP litigation since 2004.
He frequently speaks on intellectual property litigation subjects, including to the AIPLA, OCBA, OCIPLA, LAIPLA, ABA, ACC, INTA, Harvard Law School Association, Harvard Business School Association, MIT Alumni Association, and the Federalist Society. Mike’s articles on IP subjects have been featured in publications including American Marketer, Luxury Roundtable, IP Watchdog, Law 360, IP 360, The Trademark Lawyer, The Los Angeles Daily Journal, The Recorder, ABA Landslide, Orange County Business Journal, Engage, and Stanford Technology Review.
Mike has taught as an adjunct professor at Whittier School of Law and served as a JAG with the California State Military Reserve. For 16 years, he served as a Reserve Deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, retiring as a Lieutenant.
Mike serves on the Harvard Law School Association’s Senior Advisory Committee, is a board member of the Federal Bar Association of Orange County, and the vice-chair of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Intellectual Property Practice Group. He is a former member of Law360's Intellectual Property Editorial Board, a former member and former Secretary of the Harvard Law School Association's Executive Committee, and a former president of the Harvard Law School Association of Orange County.
Associate, Greehan, Taves, Pandak & Stoner, PLLC
Former General Counsel, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Donald Livingston is a former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He was s a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, in Washington, D.C., where he represented large employers in all aspects of civil rights and employment discrimination law, with an emphasis on complex employment litigation, and representations before the EEOC. He is the author of EEOC Litigation and Charge Resolution (BNA). In 2003, Mr. Livingston was elected to the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.
Partner, Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP
Larry builds on a wide range of experiences – including as an accomplished attorney, a former President of the Ohio Senate, and a legal academic – to help solve his clients’ most challenging legal problems. Larry focuses on complex litigation, including high-stakes appeals.
Larry is a Partner in the firm’s Litigation practice. He focuses his practice on litigation at both the trial and appellate levels and has experience in a variety of matters involving antitrust, fiduciary duties, torts, contracts, securities, and employment law. These range from standard contract disputes to constitutional challenges against federal statutes to defending against complex class actions.
In addition to his litigation practice, Larry served as a member of the Ohio Senate for nearly a decade. His colleagues unanimously elected him to serve as Senate President, the presiding officer of the 33-member chamber, from 2017-2020. During his time in the Senate, Larry successfully sponsored legislation on a wide range of topics, including education, tax law, elections administration, criminal law, and corporate law. These included a comprehensive update to Ohio’s corporate code and limited liability company law, including the sections setting out fiduciary duties for officers and shareholders. Larry also sponsored significant updates to Ohio’s Control Share Acquisition Act (which governs corporate takeovers). In 2018, he received the Ohio State Bar Association’s Lawyer-Legislator Distinguished Service Award.
Larry has also taught courses on Civil Procedure and Legislation as an adjunct law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has published legal scholarship on a range of issues including constitutional law, education, law and economics, and securities. He has been cited in roughly 75 law journals throughout the country and by a member of the United States Supreme Court.
Larry began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has worked at some of the nation’s largest law firms and began his private practice by spending more than five years with Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
From 2018-2020, Larry was a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a program designed to bring greater civility to public discourse. He is active in the Federalist Society and is a former board member of the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation (now known as the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation), the statewide umbrella organization for legal aid.
Associate Professor of Law, William and Mary Law School
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of St. Thomas School of Law
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