Seth M. Graham

Seth Graham is a partner in the Technology Transactions Group of Morrison & Foerster’s Tokyo office. His practice is concentrated on transactions and counseling involving intellectual property and technology, with an emphasis on licensing arrangements, technology transfers, joint development activities and registering and monetizing intellectual property assets.

Mr. Graham advises clients on matters such as software and content licensing arrangements, trademark licenses and branding strategies, outsourcing and cloud computing transactions, open source software, AI, and blockchain applications, and has experience counseling companies in a variety of fields, including the IT, pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries. Mr. Graham is also involved in structuring and negotiating patent licensing arrangements and advising on intellectual property issues relevant to investments in emerging companies and project finance and development activities. He was also previously a resident of the firm’s San Francisco office.

Mr. Graham also assists clients in adversarial litigation negotiations and settlements and in connection with mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, joint ventures and other corporate transactions. He has extensive experience with intellectual property issues relevant to cross-border transactions and in-bound licensing transactions in Asia, and also provides pro bono legal services to Médecins Sans Frontières and several other not-for-profit organizations in connection with establishing and enforcing their intellectual property rights.

Seth is ranked as a Rising Star for Japan: TMT in the 2020 edition of The Legal 500 Asia-Pacific.

Mr. Graham received his B.A. degree in Philosophy and Economics, Phi Beta Kappa and with high honors, from Dartmouth College in 1999, and later received an M.A. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in 2004. He earned his J.D. degree from Stanford Law School in 2007, where he served as Managing Editor of the Stanford Law & Policy Review and a teaching assistant to Prof. John H. Merryman (Art Law).

Representative Experience

• Alibaba Group in its acquisition of a 33% equity interest in Ant Financial.
• Toshiba in the IP and commercial aspects of both its divestiture of its legacy TV business to Hisense Electric Co., Ltd. and its global carve-out and sale of a 80% stake in Toshiba Lifestyle Products & Services Corporation to Midea Group Co. Ltd.
• Global technology consulting firm on software licensing and open source issues related to the development and commercialization of a global data analytics and machine learning product offering.
• Kaken Pharmaceutical in connection with various development and commercialization partnerships across the globe, including Kaken’s arrangement with Bausch Health Companies Inc. for the development and commercialization of various pharmaceutical products in the United States.
• SoftBank on IP and commercial issues related to the Alibaba Group’s $4 billion restructuring of its holdings in Alipay, China’s largest online payment system, and the later restructuring of Alibaba’s financial services businesses undertaken in preparation for Alibaba’s IPO.
• Otsuka in its development and commercialization agreement with ReCor Medical.
• TDK in the IP aspects of its RF filter and module joint venture with Qualcomm.
• Splunk on IP, open source and commercial issues regarding its acquisition of Caspida, Inc., a leading innovator in machine learning and behavioral analytics.
• AccuWeather on IP matters in connection with its formation of a joint venture with Huafeng Media Group, the commercial weather entity owned by the China Meteorological Administration, to launch the first foreign weather service in China.
• Yahoo! Japan on IP and commercial matters relating to its partnerships with various advertising technology service providers for Y!J’s Internet platforms.