David Andrew Perlson

David Andrew Perlson — patent litigation practice summary

Perlson is a first-chair trial and appellate litigator whose practice centers on patent, trade secret, antitrust, and complex commercial disputes. Public practice descriptions (Hogan Lovells; Lawdragon) characterize his technology focus as internet, digital media, and smartphones/mobile devices, with additional work in life sciences, financial services, and gaming. His patent docket skews toward software, networking, and data-security technologies rather than mechanical or Hatch-Waxman/pharma work; his antitrust and trade-secret docket (e.g., Waymo v. Uber) is a significant secondary component of the practice.

Side preference. The tracked data shows a single appearance, as lead trial counsel for the defendant in Google LLC v. Security First Innovations, LLC (the underlying district court action is Security First Innovations, LLC v. Google LLC, E.D. Va. No. 2:23-cv-00097, with a parallel E.D. Va. case). Public filings confirm a career-long pattern of defending operating companies — Google, Netflix, HTC, and Uber among them — against patent assertions by non-practicing entities and competitors. There are no plaintiff-side patent assertions in the tracked data, so the practice is best described as defense-side for technology operating companies. The caveat: the tracked list is very small, and the defense-side characterization rests on publicly filed matters and firm reporting rather than a comprehensive docket review.

Firm context. Perlson joined Hogan Lovells US LLP as a partner in its Global Regulatory & Intellectual Property practice group in San Francisco in January 2025, after roughly 25 years at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, where he was a San Francisco partner (court filings list him as Quinn Emanuel counsel from at least 2007–2008 through 2024). He has continued representing Google after the move; a January 2025 filing in a Texas case formally updated his firm affiliation. He is not in-house.

Notable matters and PTAB work. His most prominent technology-sector matters include Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (N.D. Cal.), the trade-secret case recognized with a Benchmark Litigation National Impact Case Award in 2019, on which he was a core team member; and I/P Engine, Inc. v. AOL Inc. (Google/Vringo), where he argued Google's Federal Circuit appeal from a $30.5 million jury verdict in 2012. He also argued for the appellees in Gemalto S.A. v. HTC Corp. (Fed. Cir. 2013-1397); his firm bio states he has argued several winning Federal Circuit appeals, though I could not independently confirm the specific dispositions of each. On the PTAB side, he appears in the Google LLC v. Security First Innovations LLC IPR family (IPR2024-00212 through -00215), where proceedings were instituted on several asserted data-security patents and the Board issued a May 2025 decision holding certain challenged claims unpatentable as obvious, while institution was denied in IPR2024-00213 (U.S. Patent 9,338,140) — a mixed PTAB record rather than a uniformly petitioner-friendly one.

Bar and education. J.D., cum laude, Northwestern University (1996); B.A., University of Wisconsin (1993); admitted in Illinois (1996) and California (2000); admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, Federal Circuit, Ninth Circuit, and several district courts.