Peter Stern is a partner in the firm’s Intellectual Property Group. Mr. Stern has a general commercial practice with an emphasis on intellectual property litigation and counseling. His experience in patent matters includes adversarial licensing and all phases of litigation. He has litigated or arbitrated numerous commercial disputes in the fields of contract, licensing, and trade secret misappropriation. He also has an active practice in internal investigations involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, primarily in Asia.
Mr. Stern has handled several high-profile engagements for corporate defendants and pro bono plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Statute, a federal statute that permits certain claims based on violations of international law. He has counseled clients in the field of corporate social responsibility, and has served as a member of the Steering Committee of BASESwiki, a dispute resolution initiative of the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights.
Mr. Stern’s experience includes over 10 years in the litigation department of the firm’s Tokyo office. He has been ranked by Chambers Asia-Pacific as a “Leading Individual” in the field of Intellectual Property and listed by Best Lawyers in the categories of both Intellectual Property and Litigation.
Mr. Stern received his B.A., Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, from Amherst College in 1985, and his M.A. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, in 1992, where he was Articles Editor of the California Law Review. Following graduation, Mr. Stern served as law clerk to Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
Mr. Stern joined Morrison & Foerster’s Litigation Department in 1994, and was elected to the partnership in fall 2000. In 1992-93, he studied at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, Japan.