Max Olson's practice includes all aspects of dispute resolution with special emphasis on patent litigation, adversarial patent license negotiations and international arbitration. Mr. Olson served as the Chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Tokyo office Litigation Department from 2006 to 2013.
Mr. Olson recently led the firm’s patent litigation teams on behalf of TDK in MagSil v. Seagate (hard disk drive components), Fujitsu in Collins v. Western Digital (diamond like coatings) and Konica Minolta in Orion v. Costco (business methods). He also led the firm’s litigation team on behalf of Sega Corporation in a global dispute over the rights to Sega’s intellectual property involving two actions in U.S. District Court, four appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, an arbitration before the Japan Commercial Arbitration Association and an arbitration before JAMS in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Mr. Olson has also recently represented Fujitsu, TDK, Yamaha, Elpida and other major corporations in various adversarial patent license negotiations.
Mr. Olson represented U.S. Olympic gymnast Paul Hamm before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, the world’s highest court for resolving sports disputes, in the highly publicized dispute over the gold medal in the men’s individual all-around event in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. A panel of three CAS arbitrators rejected the appeal filed by the bronze medalist, Korean gymnast Yang Tae Young, and held unanimously that Mr. Hamm should keep his gold medal. Mr. Olson also led the firm’s arbitration team on behalf of a mixed martial arts fighter and obtained an award from the Japan Commercial Arbitration Association releasing the fighter from an unfavorable contract with his promoter.
Mr. Olson received his Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, simultaneously from Harvard University in 1981 and his J.D., cum laude, in 1986 from the University of Michigan. He was an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before joining the firm in 1991. Mr. Olson became a partner in the firm in 1995. He served as Managing Partner of the Los Angeles office from 2004 through 2006.
Mr. Olson is a member of the State Bars of California and New York; the Litigation Section and Intellectual Property Law Section of the American Bar Association; the American Intellectual Property Law Association; the Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association; and the Association of Business Trial Lawyers. He is also a registered gaikokuho-jimu-bengoshi and a member of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association.