Gordon Endow is a partner in the San Francisco office of GRSM. He is a past chair of the firm's Business Transactions Practice Group, and an active member of the firm's Intellectual Property and Commercial Litigation Practice Groups, as well as our Diversity Committee. Gordon specializes in corporate transactions and litigation that involve intellectual property, including venture capital financing, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), technology development and licensing, privacy, e-commerce, compliance, and protection of and disputes over intellectual property.

Gordon devotes most of his time to transactional matters. He focuses on industries in the high technology sector (including software, hardware, IT, and telecom), biotech, and in the cloud. Because every company has intellectual property, he also counsels clients and drafts and negotiates joint development, purchase and supply, marketing, and joint venture agreements for manufacturers, consumer products goods companies, and services companies in all sectors, including international, health care, real estate, energy, sports and entertainment, hospitality, construction, wine, and financial services.

Prior to joining GRSM, Gordon practiced law in-house for a large telecommunications company. He works with internal clients to provides practical and proactive problem-solving advice in order to make his in-house colleagues’ jobs easier. He serves as outside general counsel for many company clients, with his broad and deep knowledge of contract, intellectual property, competition, employment, governance, and shareholder issues.

At GRSM, Gordon has had extensive IP and commercial litigation experience, including multi-billion dollar complex contract cases. He both prosecutes and defends against claims of patent infringement, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and privacy violations.

Admissions

• California 
• U.S. District Court, Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern Districts of California
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Memberships

• U.S. Japan Council
• Silicon Valley Japan Platform, a partnership between the U.S. Japan Council and the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation
• International Law Committee, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (co-chair)
• World in Tohoku, a Japanese NPO (member of Board of Advisors)
• Business Law Section, State Bar of California
• Intellectual Property Law Section, State Bar of California

Representative Experience

• Represented a private software company with patented technology in a multimillion-dollar acquisition by a publicly-traded e-commerce and brick-and-mortar company
• Represented a Japanese multinational chemical company and its U.S. subsidiary in the acquisition of a U.S.-based agrichemical company.
• Acts as outside general counsel for a state-of-the-art 3-D software maker on technology development, licensing, distribution, and strategic alliances.
• Acts as outside general counsel on venture capital, contracts, employment, compliance, and intellectual property matters for a manufacturer of high-tech oceangoing vessels.
• Represented a Japanese international technology company and its U.S. subsidiary in acquiring a U.S.-based technology company.
• Obtained an arbitration award on all breach of contract claims against an enterprise software company after a lengthy arbitration in San Francisco.
• Represented a new fast-casual restaurant, a social media app company, a wine investment fund, and other startups in obtaining venture funding from investors in multiple states.
• Obtained a dismissal with prejudice of all claims in a multimillion dollar breach of contract and copyright infringement action against a clean energy company with no consideration paid to plaintiff.
• Represented a publicly-traded building products manufacturer in trademark litigation against a competitor using the client’s marks in search engine advertising.
• Represented a major data storage technology company in an action against a former vice president for trade secret misappropriation and obtained a favorable settlement.
• Represented an international mobile device manufacturer in multiple patent infringement cases.
• Acts as outside general counsel for a large duty-free company on contract, distribution, commercial leasing, construction, employment and trade matters.
• Represented some of the largest insurers in multibillion-dollar commercial insurance litigation.
• Provides advice and counsel to scores of clients with respect to internet law, including e-commerce, breach of security (personal information, data, denial-of-service attacks, etc.) and disaster recovery, domain name/cybersquatting, and advertising and marketing.
• Counsels business entity founders and owners on shareholder buy-sell agreements, operating agreements, stock and membership purchases, stock options, redemptions, and related matters.
   

Publications

Mr. Endow served as a contributing editor to the Intellectual Property volume of the In-House Counsel's Essential Toolkit, a compendium of reference books from the Corporate Counsel Committee of the American Bar Association.

Presentations

• Moderator, International Human Rights in the Age of ISIS, annual meeting of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, November 2016
• Organizer and panelist, Rising to the Challenge: Making International Social Entrepreneurship Part of Your Practice, annual meeting of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, November 2015
• Organizer and panelist, Rising to the Challenge: How to Make International Social Entrepreneurship Part of Your Practice, 2015 National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Conference, New Orleans, November 5, 2015