Robert P. Andris and Michael D. Kanach have joined Gordon & Rees’s Intellectual Property Practice Group in San Francisco as a partner and senior counsel, respectively. Andris and Kanach are the latest additions to Gordon & Rees’s growing San Francisco office, which now has more than 115 attorneys. The firm was recently named by The National Law Journal as the 13th largest law firm in the Bay Area.
Andris is a registered patent attorney who has been counsel in more than 70 state and federal appeals. His practice focuses on litigating IP disputes in the areas of patent, trademark, copyright, trade secrets, product liability and license agreements. He has been lead counsel in infringement and invalidity jury trials and at numerous Markman hearings, and has handled patent suits across the country. Recently – in LifeScan v. Shasta Tech., 734 F.3d 1361 (Fed Cir, Nov. 4, 2013) – Andris successfully defended a motion for preliminary injunction in the trial court and in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, thereby extending the law of patent exhaustion to method patents. His trademark experience includes cases involving domain names, web pages, metatags and claims of infringement through search engine advertising, and he was one of the first attorneys in the nation to try a trademark case to a jury under the 1999 Federal Anti-Cybersquatting Statute. Andris has resolved disputes involving trade dress in furniture, food packages, exercise equipment and other sporting goods as well as copyright infringement and attribution claims, and ownership, importation and distribution disputes. Andris’s accomplishments have led to a Martindale-Hubbell peer review rating of AV Preeminent and the honor of inclusion in Northern California Super Lawyers magazine in the area of intellectual property.
Kanach’s litigation experience includes patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and contract disputes. He counsels clients on procurement and enforcement of IP assets, including trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, utility patents, and design patents, and performs related transactional work and contract negotiations. Kanach also has represented clients in industries including semiconductors, photovoltaic inverters, particle detectors, pharmaceutical devices, software and applications, alcoholic beverages and spirits, furniture, and other consumer products.