Chu

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Morgan Chu

Co-Managing Partner

Irell & Manella LLP

As the stakes get higher for companies doing business on the Internet, conflicts inevitably arise. And one of the top attorneys dealing in such issues is Morgan Chu at Irell & Manella.

With more than 20 years of experience in helping the country’s leading technology companies protect their patents, trademarks and trade secrets, 47-year-old Chu has gravitated toward Internet-related matters not an easy specialty given the limited amount of casework on the subject.

Trademark issues are the most obvious problems, Chu said. Disputes over Web-site addresses are especially common, and Chu has represented several well-known companies in obtaining exclusive rights to use their trademarked name for Web addresses.

“The best kind of lawyering,” Chu said, “is making sure that clients avoid major missteps avoid having headlines in the newspapers and then thinking creatively how best to protect the important values that are being generated through the development of intellectual property.”

Among the clients Chu has helped “avoid having headlines” are Intel, Hewlett-Packard, America Online, Paramount, Disney and publisher Houghton Mifflin.

Some cases have taken new twists as competitors become more sophisticated. For example, Chu has been involved in several cases in which companies have used the trademarked names of their competitors in Web addresses, hoping to lure customers away.

Such schemes often end up in litigation, which is where Chu has been known to shine. In a 1994 landmark case, he successfully represented Stac Electronics Inc. against Microsoft Corp. for infringing on Stac’s patent on data compression technology which makes large programs or documents more easily transferable over the Internet. A jury ordered Microsoft to pay $120 million to Stac.

Doug Whiting, vice president of technology at Stac, said it was Chu’s plain-spoken style and grasp of complex technological issues that helped win the case.

“Chu did a great job in formulating the issues and presenting them so that the jury could understand,” said Whiting. “He also did a great job in predicting what the key issues would be. He told us up front months before the trial of our weaknesses and strengths.”

David Brindley

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