Jeffrey K. Lee
Partner

Jeffrey Lee joined the GCA Law Partners Litigation Group in July 2004.

Mr. Lee represents clients in connection with a wide range of disputes, providing strategic counseling and advocacy from the pre-litigation stage through trial and appeal. His clients include public and private companies with both domestic and international operations, small businesses, associations, and individuals.

Practice Areas

Mr. Lee’s matters frequently involve disputes concerning intellectual property rights to innovative technologies, their commercialization, and marketplace competition. He has represented clients in patent, trademark, and copyright infringement matters; trade secret and employee non-compete litigation; unfair competition and antitrust claims; and contract disputes involving complex technologies. He has particular expertise litigating money damages, marketplace injury, and injunctive relief issues. His experience includes technology disputes involving entertainment software, video game hardware, genetically-engineered biopharmaceuticals, semiconductor manufacture, metallurgical processes, and environmental services.

Mr. Lee further handles general litigation matters, including commercial, employment, and business disputes in federal and state courts. He also maintains an active environmental and land use litigation practice, having served as lead counsel in numerous complex investigations and cases nationwide. He has special expertise handling disputes arising under wetlands, clean water, clean air, hazardous substance, contaminated site, and waste disposal laws. He additionally represents clients in constitutional litigation and administrative agency disputes in a variety of subject areas, including in environmental, land use, and civil rights matters.

Professional Background

Mr. Lee has been twice recognized for his trial advocacy, first receiving a Special Achievement Award and later a Special Commendation from the Attorney General while serving as a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice. In that capacity, he led complex investigations and trial and appellate matters for the federal government. In private practice, he represented clients with the international law firm of Latham & Watkins and later maintained a high-stakes technology litigation practice with the Silicon Valley intellectual property trial boutique, Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder.

Mr. Lee was appointed to the California State Bar's Committee on Federal Courts, served as its Secretary, and represented Santa Clara County as a delegate to the State Bar Conference. He is the past-General Counsel of the Organization of Chinese Americans, Inc. (OCA), a national, Washington, DC-based social justice organization, and a past-President of OCA's Silicon Valley Chapter. Previously, he served as General Counsel and a Director of the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership, based in Washington, DC.

Mr. Lee served as a law clerk to the Hon. William H. Timbers, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1992-93 term. He simultaneously earned two law degrees: a joint J.D., cum laude, and a Master of Studies in Environmental Law, magna cum laude, in 1992 from Vermont Law School, while serving as the Senior Articles Editor of the Vermont Law Review. In 1987, he received his A.B. degree in Biology from Colgate University.

Representative Matters

Intellectual Property and Competition Litigation

• Representation and strategic counseling of a game publishing company accused of patent infringement arising from the release of an original video game and peripherals; and in connection with a federal trademark infringement and unfair competition matter involving an international video game franchise.

• Representation of an electronic entertainment company in connection with a patent infringement case and antitrust claims arising from promotion and sale of video games and hardware.

• Representation of a metallurgy and materials science company in federal and state court actions to secure marketplace rights against a competitor alleging existence of a non-competition obligation, misuse of trade secrets, and exclusive marketing rights.

• Representation of a large international biotechnology company in an arbitral trial conducted over a nine-month period to determine contractual marketing rights to a multi-billion dollar biopharmaceutical, obtaining damages and establishing entitlement to costs and fees.

• Representation of a supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment against claims of trade secret misappropriation by a competitor.

• Representation of a large international biotechnology company in patent infringement litigation, including a federal appeal of a competitor’s claims of patent infringement arising from patents for the genetic engineering of bacteria to produce human proteins; and in federal trial court against claims of patent infringement by a primary competitor involving plasmid and expression vector patents.

• Representation of two biotechnology company defendants in patent infringement litigation against a competitor to determine patent and marketing rights to treatments for male erectile dysfunction.
  
  General Commercial, Employment, and Business Litigation
  

• Representation of an international real estate holding company against claims of accounting fraud and breach of contract.

• Representation of private energy co-generation companies in contract, tort, fraud, false advertising, defective product, and property damage claims arising from commercial use of the recycled waste by-products.

• Representation of a private medical laser treatment company in connection with an employment-related dispute with a founder.

• Representation of a large national healthcare company and certain executives in a federal class action alleging fiduciary breach and fraud in management of a company stock bonus plan.
  
  Environmental, Constitutional, and Administrative Litigation
  

• Various matters involving federal government investigation and civil prosecution of businesses and individuals under federal wetlands laws, including in connection with use and development of seasonal and agricultural lands.

• Representation of a landowner in connection with various petitions before the California State Water Resources Control Board challenging agency cleanup orders preceding development of certain contaminated properties.

• Representation and counseling of various clients during internal compliance audits, agency investigations, and negotiations, including an international chemical company regarding potential federal reporting violations; and several California real estate development and management firms regarding alleged environmental lead disclosure issues.

• Representation of various clients in cases involving liability for pollution under CERCLA, including at trial to allocate responsibility for historical pollution of land contaminated during World War II in California; a case involving civil penalties and natural resource damages for historical contamination in Montana dating to the mid-19th century; representation of a corporation in an action by the federal government seeking penalties and natural resource damages for pesticide and heavy-metals pollution in California’s Santa Monica Bay.

• Various federal court actions involving challenges to U.S. EPA permit and rulemaking decisions under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, TSCA, RCRA, CERCLA, NEPA and other environmental laws, including several federal appeals involving challenges to Clean Air Act rules affecting California air quality standards, and a federal trial involving hazardous waste releases by a chemical company in Louisiana’s “cancer alley.”

• Trial of a politically-sensitive federal case under the Clean Water Act and NEPA, involving national security, human health and safety, and environmental justice issues arising from planned operations of the Navy’s experimental Seawolf-class nuclear attack submarines.

• Representation of various for-profit and non-profit clients in constitutional law matters, including constitutional challenges to agency actions; due process and equal protection challenges to use of punch-card ballots in the 2003 California Special Election; constitutional issues in an international child-custody case; and constitutional and federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) issues in an international human rights matter.

e-mail:

phone: 650.237.7271