Mr. Stern has a general commercial litigation practice with an emphasis on intellectual property litigation and counseling. His experience in patent matters includes both adversarial licensing and all phases of litigation, and covers technological fields such as semiconductors, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Representative clients include Pioneer Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., Advantest Corp., and Fuji Electric Device Technology Co., Ltd. He assisted Nikon Corp. in obtaining a $145 million settlement from its chief competitor in the photolithography industry after patent litigation in multiple jurisdictions. He was also part of the trial team that helped Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. win a $13 million jury verdict in patent litigation in the Northern District of California against its chief competitor in the field of memory repair.

Mr. Stern has litigated or arbitrated numerous commercial disputes in the fields of contract, licensing, antitrust, energy, and trade secret misappropriation. Recently, he led TDK Corp. in obtaining a favorable settlement in a Hong Kong arbitration involving the breach of representations and warranties in connection with the sale of a business. He also has an active practice in the field of internal investigations, primarily in Asia.

Mr. Stern has also handled several high-profile engagements for corporate defendants and pro bono plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a federal statute that permits certain claims based on violations of international law.  He is part of a Morrison & Foerster litigation team that obtained dismissal of all claims for a large mining company that was alleged to have violated international law in relation to the operation of one of its mines. He was also colead counsel for plaintiffs in Romagoza v. Garcia, in which a Florida jury found two former military leaders of El Salvador liable for $54.6 million in damages to three torture victims of that country. This verdict appeared on The National Law Journal’s list of the top 100 verdicts of 2002, and was subsequently upheld by the Eleventh Circuit on appeal. 434 F. 3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2006). Mr. Stern has written and spoken widely on the ATS, and has also counseled clients in the emerging field of corporate social responsibility.

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. He joined Morrison & Foerster’s Litigation Department in 1994 and was elected to the partnership in Fall 2000.

In 1992-93, Mr. Stern studied at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, Japan. He was resident in the firm’s Tokyo office in 1995-98, and returned to Tokyo from the firm’s San Francisco Bay Area offices in 2003. He is currently qualified as a Gaikokuho-Jimu-Bengoshi in Japan.