Michael O’Brien

Michael O'Brien is counsel at McKown Bailey where he handles intellectual property litigation. Mike has represented plaintiffs and defendants in lawsuits under the Patent Act, Lanham Act, Copyright Act, Defend Trade Secrets Act, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and Sherman Act. Outside of the courtroom, Mike represents clients in arbitration under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and Amazon’s Neutral Patent Evaluation along with internal procedures through Shopify, Ebay and Etsy. Clients know and trust Mike to defend their rights whenever there are challenges.

In addition to work in private practice, Mike worked for many years as a law professor. He has published a book and many articles on game theory and business strategy. Mike continues to teach continuing legal education courses on insurance coverage for intellectual property defense. Mike takes cases on the forefront of technology. Some representative matters include:

• In a false designation of origin (unregistered trademark) case, Mike defeated the Defendant’s counterclaim on a Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings and then favorably settled the case.
• In a misrepresentation claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Mike arranged for service by email on several Chinese entities and then obtained a permanent injunction against the defendants.
• Mike once won a racketeering case for the Plaintiff. The judge had the Defendant arrested and detained until the Defendant signed a settlement agreement.
• In a copyright infringement case, Mike successfully defended a motion to dismiss allowing a copyright infringement case against a media company to go into discovery.

Mike received his J.D. magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America – Columbus School of Law. While there, he worked for Judge Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge James A. Kenney III on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.