Alan Cope Johnston is Managing Partner of the firm’s Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia Offices. Mr. Johnston’s litigation practice focuses on complex litigation involving patent disputes, theft of trade secrets, and technology licensing, as well as a wide variety of commercial disputes including breach of contract, corporate control and corporate governance issues. He has represented companies in the computer manufacturing and design, semiconductor memory, semiconductor processing, semiconductor equipment manufacturing, medical device, diode laser, disk drive, software development, and biotechnology industries, as well as a variety of other commercial business enterprises.

Mr. Johnston received his A.B. degree, cum laude, with high honors from Yale University in 1968 and, after serving as an officer aboard a U. S. Navy submarine, his J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1975. He joined Morrison & Foerster in 1975, becoming a partner of the firm in 1981. Mr. Johnston was one of the founders of both the firm’s Washington D.C. and Palo Alto offices. Mr. Johnston returned to Washington in 2006 after four years in the firm’s Tokyo office.

While in Japan, Mr. Johnston was ranked as a “leading lawyer” in dispute resolution and in intellectual property in Chambers Global 2006, and as “leading lawyer” for dispute resolution in the PLC Cross Border Handbooks 2006-07. He is also identified as a “super lawyer” in intellectual property litigation in Northern California Super Lawyers 2006.

Mr. Johnston’s experience includes the following intellectual property/technology disputes:

• Sharp Corporation v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sharp Corporation v. HannStar Display Corp.
  Counsel for plaintiff Sharp in these patent infringement actions over LCD technology. Both suits are pending in the Eastern District of Texas.
• Certain Rechargeable Lithium- Ion Batteries, Components Thereof, and Products Containing Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-600.
  Counsel for respondent Sanyo Electric Co. in ITC investigation involving alleged infringement of patents covering formulae for rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries used in laptops and cell phones.
• Representation of Japanese Companies
  Counsel for major Japanese companies, including Fujitsu Limited and Toshiba Corporation, in patent and trade secret disputes and patent licensing negotiations. These matters have involved a variety of technologies including flash memory technology, DRAMs, “smart” batteries, audio compression technologies, and circuitry to connect multiple CPUs with multiple memories.
• Veritas Software Corporation v. Integratus Inc.
  Counsel for Integratus in a suit alleging patent infringement and theft of trade secrets relating to high availability software
• On Command Video v. MagiNet Corporation
  Counsel for On Command Video in a patent licensing and trade secret dispute over the technology for delivering movies on demand in hotel rooms.
• VISX Incorporated v. Nidek Co. Ltd.
  Counsel for VISX in lawsuits both in federal district court and the International Trade Commission alleging infringement of patents on laser vision correction equipment and methods.
• Ramax Semiconductor, Inc. v. S-MOS Systems, Inc.
  Counsel for S-MOS Systems in a dispute regarding allocation of semiconductor fab capacity for the manufacture of SRAM memory devices.
• Spectra-Physics, Inc. v. SDL Inc.
  Counsel for SDL in a dispute over license rights to design and manufacturing technology for semiconductor lasers, critical components in fiber optic communication networks.
• Computer Associates v. Baan USA
  Counsel for Baan USA in an action alleged theft of trade secrets regarding the design of enterprise resource planning software.
• Acuson Corporation v. Hewlett-Packard Company and Acuson Corporation v. Advanced Technology Laboratories
  Counsel for Acuson in a series of disputes involving patents pertaining to ultrasound medical diagnostic equipment.
• Avantek Inc. v. Celeritek Inc.
  Counsel for Avantek in a theft of trade secrets case involving proprietary techniques for manufacturing gallium arsenide field effect transistors.

Mr. Johnston lectures frequently on U.S. patent litigation, the use of experts in high technology cases and alternative dispute resolution techniques. Mr. Johnston has served as a commercial arbitrator and mediator for the American Arbitration Association and a Judge Pro Tem for the Santa Clara County California Superior Court. Mr. Johnston is admitted to practice in California, the District of Columbia, and New York.