William G. Pecau

William G. Pecau is an intellectual property litigator who has represented clients as lead trial counsel in trademark, unfair competition, false advertising, copyright, and patent cases before many federal trial and appellate courts in the United States and proceedings before the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the International Trade Commission (ITC).

He also has extensive experience negotiating and counseling clients in transactions involving trademarks, copyrights, and software such as licensing, acquisition, and joint venture agreements.

Will has been described in WTR as “a creative attorney with deep insight.” He combines imagination with the knowledge and experience he has gained through more than 35 years of practicing at the highest levels of his profession to obtain practical results congruent with his client’s business objectives.

Will represented BMG in its “trailblazing,” “huge victory,” “landmark ruling,” case against Cox Communications that tested an Internet service provider’s responsibilities for the copyright infringing actions of its users.

The jury found Cox liable for willful contributory copyright infringement and awarded $25 million in damages award. The case marks the first time an ISP has been held liable for users subscribers’ piracy.

He recently defended S.K. Hynix in a case brought by SanDisk claiming massive trade secret misappropriation that was concluded in 2015 by a confidential settlement and a product supply agreement.

Other cases include representing Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in a trade secret action brought by Huawei Technologies to block the $1.2 billion sale of Motorola’s wireless networks business to NSN. The parties eventually negotiated a settlement allowing the sale to move forward.

Will also represented Clorox in an ITC case involving its CLOROX and PINE-SOL brands and the Federation of Swiss Watch Industry before the Federal Circuit concerning the SWISS and SWISS MADE certification marks.

Other notable trademark cases include a successful trial in the Middle District of Alabama against Regions University for infringement of the Regions mark of Regions Bank and a decision of the Federal Circuit in favor of Texaco against the registration of a Clear Bottle mark by Pennzoil-Quaker State.

Will has represented clients in many other prominent cases such as the defense of barnesandnoble.com in a patent infringement action concerning Amazon.com’s “1-Click” business method patent, the defense of Microsoft and Expedia against Priceline.com’s “Name Your Own Price” business method patent, and the prosecution of Hewlett-Packard’s inkjet technology patent, trademark and unfair competition claims against Nu-Kote International.

Another high-profile case is the Apple Computer v. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard case concerning Apple’s claim of infringement of its Graphical User Interface by Microsoft’s Windows and HP’s NewWave.