Andy Monach has a trial and appellate litigation and arbitration practice, with special emphasis on patent litigation and other disputes involving advanced technology. His civil jury trial practice also has included several complex fraud cases, disputes between electric utilities and independent power producers, securities and fiduciary duty litigation, and other commercial disputes.
Mr. Monach advises and represents clients concerning display technology, consumer electronics, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, e-commerce, biotechnology, chemical, and medical device patents, software development, software copyright infringement, and technology licensing. His clients range from small companies to large multinational corporations.
Mr. Monach's recent patent litigation experience includes a number of high-profile cases involving plasma display technology. He was part of the team that represented plaintiff Pioneer Corporation against Samsung SDI in patent infringement cases in the Eastern District of Texas. He led the successful defense that resulted in the pretrial dismissal of all four Samsung patent infringement counterclaims, and then was part of the Pioneer trial team that obtained a jury verdict finding Samsung SDI liable for $59 million in damages and willful infringement.
Mr. Monach also recently represented Hitachi Plasma Patent Licensing (HPPL) and a number of Hitachi affiliates in patent infringement suits against LG Electronics in the Eastern District of Texas. After defeating LGE's efforts to consolidate its countersuits with HPPL's infringement action and receiving a favorable claim construction ruling, he and his team helped to negotiate a favorable settlement of several pending infringement cases.
Mr. Monach also focuses on creating cost-effective opportunities to resolve cases favorably short of trial. For example, in defending Aspect Software in a patent infringement case brought by Lucent, he helped Aspect identify and acquire patents that could be asserted in a countersuit against Lucent. Shortly after the countersuit was filed, Lucent and Aspect entered into an amicable long-term settlement.
For Shutterfly, a leading online digital imaging company, Mr. Monach developed an efficient strategy to move a case out of the courtroom and into arbitration, obtaining a complete victory for Shutterfly within a matter of months. Mr. Monach and his team also recently successfully defended Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in a high-stakes patent suit involving hard disk drive technology, obtaining a summary judgment of non-infringement.