Ethan Horwitz

Ethan Horwitz has more than 25 years of experience as a first chair trial and appellate lawyer across the full range of intellectual property law. He litigates and advises clients in the full range of intellectual property matters in the United States and internationally. He is the author of four treatises by LexisNexis, including the three-volume Horwitz on Patent Litigation and five-volume Horwitz on World Trademark Law. He was described as a “fantastic trial lawyer” in World Trademark Review.

Ethan has long represented clients in significant electronic, chemical, and mechanical patent cases, including a case in which he obtained the first-ever preliminary injunction on a design patent on behalf of Oscar Mayer, defending its Lunchables product against Sara Lee. He also has represented Miller and Molson, who were accused of violating Labatt’s patent on the process for making ice beer. He represented Spansion, a flash memory fabricator in one of the largest International Trade Commission cases in history, involving a two-week trial on two patents – one on the construction of a flash chip and the other on the programming of a flash chip.

He has litigated and advised clients regarding a variety of technologies including computer software, telephone logging, Voice-over-Internet Protocol, computer vision, video compression, brewing, pharmaceuticals, food chemistry, chemical processes, skin transplants, antioxidants, and simple mechanical products.

Ethan has also tried numerous trademark, trade dress, and dilution lawsuits. These include representing Pepperidge Farm in a landmark case that resulted in a preliminary injunction based on Pepperidge Farm’s rights to the shape of its Goldfish cracker. This case was among the first to issue a preliminary injunction based solely on a dilution claim.

In other trademark and trade dress cases, he defended Lotus’s mark “Notes” against an attack by Borland; Kraft’s trade dress for its Singles product against infringement by Borden; and Kraft’s trade dress and trademark for its Philadelphia Cream Cheese product from infringement by Bongrain. He also defended Cosmair (L’Oreal) and Ralph Lauren in an action brought by Calvin Klein to enjoin their new fragrance, Ralph Lauren Romance.

Ethan has extensive experience in appellate work as well. He has argued appeals in such courts as the Federal Circuit, the Second Circuit, and the New York Court of Appeals, and in administrative settings, including the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Some of his appeals involved landmark decisions relating to reversionary rights under the Copyright Act, the status of well-known marks, and issues of attorney-client privilege in patent cases.