James Gordon focuses on complex commercial litigation and intellectual property disputes, including patent infringement, trade secrets, complex agreements, and regulatory challenges. He represents clients across a range of industries—such as software technology, manufacturing, life sciences, and energy regulation—in federal courts, state courts, and arbitration.

Before joining RJLF, James served as a federal law clerk to the Honorable William H. Alsup in the Northern District of California.

James earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he served on the editorial board of the Columbia Law Review, received Dean’s Honors, and was recognized as a James Kent Scholar and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. During law school, James externed at the Solicitor General’s Office of the New York Attorney General, where he worked on a broad range of high-profile federal and state appellate matters, and for the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Prior to law school, James was a legal assistant for Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles and an economic policy fellow for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. James is committed to giving back to the community through an active pro bono practice.  

Representative Matters

• Represents Broadcom Inc. in multiple patent infringement lawsuits and appeals against Netflix, Inc. in the Northern District of California, involving video streaming technologies.

• Represents Bruker Cellular Analysis in litigation in the Northern District of California concerning alleged infringement of antibody discovery technology.

• Represents Key Patent Innovations Ltd. and Valtrus Innovations Ltd. in multiple patent infringement actions against SAP SE and SAP America, Inc., filed in the Eastern District of Texas and the District of Delaware. The litigation involves enterprise software technologies, with asserted claims spanning several patents related to data processing and business operations.

• Represented Oldcastle and CRL, leading architectural hardware supply companies, in a multi-hundred-million-dollar dispute involving breach of contract, patent infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The matter spanned AAA arbitration, federal court, California state court, and bankruptcy court.

• Successfully obtained dismissal of business contractual interference claims in a pro bono matter in California state court, where the opposing party sought damages in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• Successfully represented high-profile visual artist in securing favorable confidential settlement over breach of contract claims.

• Helped defend NatWest Capital Markets in SIPA adversary proceedings initiated by the Madoff Trustee in bankruptcy court. The case involved complex financial and regulatory issues arising from the fallout of the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities fraud.

• Represents Droplets, Inc. in ongoing patent litigation in the Eastern District of Texas against Ford, Home Depot, Walmart, and AT&T, involving groundbreaking website technology. The case builds on prior Droplets enforcement actions concerning interactive web interface innovations.

• Represented CardWare and helped successfully secure a confidential settlement in high-stakes patent litigation against Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the Eastern District of Texas. The case involved critical intellectual property claims with bet-the-company implications for CardWare.

Publications

• Enforcing and Reforming Structured Settlement Protection Acts, 120 Colum. L. Rev. 1549 (2020). Published note cited by multiple courts, including the New York Court of Appeals, involving legislation concerning financial abuse of lead-poisoning victims.

• Corporate Manipulation of Commercial Bail Regulation, 121 Colum. L. Rev. F. 115 (2021). Published comment featured in an episode of the award-winning criminal justice podcast 70 Million.

• Editor, Chapter “Governmental Entity Litigation” in Commercial Litigation in the New York State Courts (authored by Michael Feldberg).