Cal Litsey is the head of the firm's worldwide intellectual property group and one of its lead litigators for complex intellectual property cases.
Cal has successfully handled patent, trade secret, copyright, trademark, advertising, media and entertainment cases throughout the United States for a wide variety of companies and individuals, including Seagate Technology, Thomson Reuters, Wyeth, Target, Pella Windows, Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures, ASCAP, Prince, Lenny Kravitz and others. Cal has been consistently recognized as a leading IP litigator in The Best Lawyers in America. He is a long-standing editor of The IP Book, a comprehensive IP manual published annually for the Midwest Intellectual Property Institute, and has taught advanced intellectual property litigation seminars as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Cal's representative cases include:
- Winning a complete defense verdict for Seagate Technology after a six-week jury trial in a complex patent infringement suit brought by Siemens relating to sensor technology for hard disc drives. The trial victory was featured in IP Law360, Bloomberg, and other news publications.
- Winning one of the most sweeping permanent injunctions ever reported representing Wyeth in a five-week trial in a trade secret misappropriation action involving Wyeth's chemical process for manufacturing the billion-dollar drug Premarin®. The trial victory was profiled in The National Law Journal and other publications.
- Winning a complete defense verdict for FTD, the worldwide florists trade group, in a two-week jury trial in a commercial and intellectual property suit.
- Securing a complete dismissal of patent claims brought by a competitor against Thomson Reuters in a case involving electronic publishing.
- Winning a complete defense victory for Saunders Group, a manufacturer of cervical traction devices, in a multi-million dollar arbitration hearing relating to a patent license agreement.
- Winning the complete dismissal for Columbia Pictures of copyright claims relating to the music for the title song of the motion picture Ghostbusters II.
- Securing for Target the complete withdrawal of Kmart's national "Dare to Compare" advertising campaign in a false advertising suit.
- Securing the complete dismissal of copyright infringement claims representing the recording artist and songwriter Prince in a suit involving the song "You Got the Look."
- Defeating multiple injunction motions representing the Yankuang Group of companies in a trade secret suit brought by BP relating to acetic acid technology.
Cal also advises clients on copyright, trademark, advertising and entertainment matters. He is regularly involved in transactions for film and television production companies, book publishers and other content providers.