Andrew Bridges

Andrew Bridges is a litigation partner in the firm’s San Francisco office and concentrates his practice on litigation and strategic counseling with respect to trademark, copyright, advertising, consumer protection, unfair competition, trade secrets, Internet regulation, and media law.

Mr. Bridges is a highly regarded litigator who has been the lead counsel in a variety of notable intellectual property cases, including his successful defense of Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. in a landmark case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America to ban distribution of the Rio MP3 music player; his successful representation (in both the trial court and the U.S. Court of Appeals) on behalf of Stanford Microdevices, blocking Stanford University’s attempt to strip his client of its name during its initial public offering; the successful defense of CNET in a suit brought by Snap-on Tools to prevent the launch of the Snap!Online service; a victory for MasterCard in a secondary copyright and trademark liability defense relating to allegedly infringing merchants. Mr. Bridges also recently successfully defended ClearPlay Inc. in a landmark case brought by 16 Hollywood directors, eight motion picture studios, and the Directors Guild of America under both copyright and trademark law that challenged ClearPlay’s distribution of DVD player control software that allows owners of motion picture DVDs to skip and mute portions of motion picture DVDs to shield their children from violence and other offensive content during the replay of motion picture DVDs. He currently represents several of the best known e-commerce and technology companies in litigation and counseling over a wide range of issues.

Mr. Bridges also represented the Digital Media Association in its amicus curiae brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals in the A&M Records v. Napster case as well as the Consumer Electronics Association, Information Technology Association of America, and other trade associations in an amicus curiae brief before the trial court in Paramount Pictures v. ReplayTV. He was original lead counsel defending StreamCast Networks (the producer of the Morpheus P2P communication software) in the landmark case brought by motion picture studios and record labels in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster.

On the counseling front, Mr. Bridges assists clients with branding portfolio strategies, e-commerce business strategies, and litigation risk avoidance. He has a broad understanding of global copyright, branding, and e-commerce issues with connections to an extensive network of local counsel around the world.

He serves as an early neutral evaluator for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and as a domain name arbitrator for the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva.

• Web site