Max Olson is a partner in the firm’s Intellectual Property Group and Litigation Department. Mr. 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 the Tokyo office Litigation Department from 2006 to 2013, and managing partner of the Los Angeles office from 2004 through 2006.
Mr. Olson recently led the firm’s patent litigation teams on behalf of Fujitsu in ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-841 (In re Certain Computers and Computer Peripheral Devices), and TDK in MagSil v. Seagate (hard disk drive components). 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, Konica Minolta, TDK, Yamaha, Micron Memory Japan, Advantest, Sega and other major corporations in various adversarial patent license negotiations against some of the world’s largest patent holders.
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 is a member of the Litigation Section and the 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.
Mr. Olson received his M.A. and B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard University and his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan.
Max Olson is recommended as a leading lawyer by the latest editions of the following rankings publications:
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