Michael Bettinger

Practice Areas

MIKE BETTINGER is a partner in Sidley’s San Francisco office and heads the firm’s West Coast Intellectual Property Litigation practice. Mike is a leading national trial lawyer for patent and intellectual property cases. He has tried 30 cases to verdict, securing notable jury trial wins in Federal courts throughout the U.S. for premier technology companies in the telecommunications, computer, software, semiconductor and healthcare industries.

Representative trial wins

Mike delivered a jury verdict of non-infringement and invalidity for Microsoft in a patent case involving Xbox video technology filed by competitor Biscotti in the Eastern District of Texas. He secured a defense jury verdict for Baxter Healthcare in a patent case involving intravenous drug pump technology filed by Carefusion in the Southern District of California. That 2012 win was selected by the Daily Journal as a “California Top Ten Defense Verdict.” Mike chalked up a jury defense verdict of non-infringement and no trade secret misappropriation for Microsoft in a patent secret case involving videoconferencing technology filed by competitor Placeware in the Northern District of California. He has also scored jury defense verdicts of non-infringement for Varian subsidiary Z-Axis in a medical device patent case filed by competitor Nomos in the District of Massachusetts, and for Novatel in a modem technology case filed by competitor DNT in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Mike’s trial wins reach beyond patent cases. He notched a landmark jury defense verdict for Abercrombie & Fitch in a trademark case filed by Levi Strauss & Co in the Northern District of California, involving Levi’s “famous” trademark for its back-pocket stitching design. The Daily Journal selected this first-of-its-kind trial win as a “California Top Ten Defense Verdict” in 2009.

Mike’s patent trial wins also extend to the International Trade Commission where, as lead counsel, he has obtained Initial Decisions of non-infringement, all affirmed by the Commission, for Amazon in a patent case filed by TPL involving semiconductor technology; Kodak in a patent case filed by Apple involving digital camera technology; STMicroelectronics in a patent case filed by Rambus involving semiconductor technology; Nanya in a patent case filed by LSI/Agere involving semiconductor fabrication technology; and Silicon Motion in a patent case filed by SanDisk involving semiconductor technology.