Jennifer Criss Of Counsel

Washington, D.C.

Jennifer's practice focuses on negotiating the intellectual property and information technology aspects of complex commercial and corporate transactions, from mergers and acquisitions to financing transactions to corporate divestitures and spin-offs. She also works with technology companies to more mature entities on complex commercial transactions.

Jennifer routinely advises clients on strategic partnerships and guides companies at every stage of corporate acquisitions where intellectual property and technology are key assets. She drafts, negotiates, and advises clients on various software commercial and IP licenses, software as a service (SaaS) and cloud services agreements, software and product development agreements, joint development agreements, software and hardware contracts, and related consulting agreements. Jennifer works with cross-border clients across numerous technology-driven sectors, including entertainment, media, clean energy, biotechnology, and retail.

Additionally, Jennifer has extensive knowledge of copyright law and counsels clients on all aspects of copyright protection.

Jennifer has been an active member of the American Bar Association's Section of Intellectual Property Law and involved in its leadership for over 10 years. In August 2023, she began a 4-year position as one of 16 members of the Section's Council, helping to establish policy and resolutions on behalf of the IP Section. Jennifer has also been a member of its Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Board since 2016. She previously served on the Section's Nominating Committee. She previously served as vice chair of the ABA's Copyright Division (2020-2021) and was chair of the Committee on Copyright & Social Media. 

Jennifer is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Her speaking engagements and publications have addressed topics such as asset sales involving intellectual property, ownership matters, copyright permissions, fair use, online harassment, and data privacy and cybersecurity.

Before her legal career, Jennifer earned her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. She taught art history at The George Washington University and American University. She received fellowships from the French Ministry of Education (Chateaubriand Fellowship), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Phillips Collection, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Stefan Renner Partner

Düsseldorf; Munich

Stefan focuses as well on real estate transactions and corporate restructurings. 

Benedikt Migdal Partner

Düsseldorf

Benedikt advises on structuring and negotiating the IP aspects of corporate transactions, including M&A, divestments and venture investments as well as of commercial transactions where intellectual property rights and know-how are key assets. His work encompasses, for example, IP licensing and technology transfer agreements, engineering services agreements, transition services agreements, R&D collaborations, and IP aspects of contracts throughout the life sciences sector.

Benedikt is also an experienced patent and trade secret litigator and has represented German and international clients from a range of industries in complex disputes, especially concerning patents and know-how in the fields of mobile telecommunication/connectivity and the life sciences.

Based on his extensive experience in both IP transactions and litigation, he deeply understands the full range of legal and economical issues that technology-driven companies are challenged with in context with IP. This also includes IP-related competition law issues, such as FRAND-requirements for licensing and enforcing standard essential patents as well as issues arising in connection with EU regulations concerning technology transfers.

Kazuya Takeda Associate

Tokyo

He specializes in data protection and cybersecurity, including personal information protection. Additionally, he manages civil and commercial litigation and dispute resolution, cross-border and domestic M&A,  investigation, antitrust and competition, and labor and employment related matters. He also has experience in general corporate legal affairs.

Before joining Orrick, he worked for Kasame & Associates Co., Ltd. located in Thailand and provided Japanese corporate clients with a variety of legal services regarding Thai laws, including the Personal Data Protection Act, Labour Protection Act, Civil and Commercial Code, Trademark Act, Foreign Business Act, etc. for over two years. Prior to working in Thailand, he was an associate at Okamura Law Office and mainly handled civil litigations, general corporate cases, and trade competition law cases for about three years.

Jean-Pierre Martel Partner

Paris

He is called on by boards and management teams to advise on mergers, divestitures, corporate acquisitions and restructurings as well as litigations and arbitrations. He is the founding partner of the premier French boutique Rambaud Martel, which combined with Orrick’s global platform in 2006.

Jean-Pierre has recently had a hand in the most significant cross-border deals in the French market. His work includes advising the board of Alstom on the $17 billion sale of its power units to General Electric, counseling L’Oréal on buying back 8% of its own capital from Nestlé, associated with the sale of assets, advising Peugeot’s family on the restructuring of Peugeot SA’s capital which involved China’s Dongfeng Motor Group and the French state, the board of Club Méditerranée in the context of competing take-over bids from China’s Fosun Group and Italia’s Bonomi’s Group, the board of Areva in the financial restructuring of the company.  

Chambers & Partners recognized Jean-Pierre as an “Individual Star” in Corporate/M&A, noting that he is a “seasoned and highly-respected M&A practitioner whose experience covers a wide range of transactional activities.

Jean-Pierre has also developed very substantial litigation and arbitration experience, being ranked Band 1 by Chambers in Dispute Resolution. Most notably, among his successes, the very high-profile Bernard Tapie Case where he has been assisting Consortium de Réalisation, the French government entity tasked with liquidating the assets of Crédit Lyonnais for the French State. Jean-Pierre won rulings from the Paris Court of Appeal in 2015 that withdrew initial arbitral awards that had required CDR to pay €404 million to Tapie’s liquidators and companies and sentenced them to repay CDR the full amount plus interests and costs. He has just succeeded in obtaining visible Court decisions which have released from any criminal liability charged persons with tax fraud.

Jean-Pierre also serves as an arbitrator in ad hoc, ICC and AFA arbitration proceedings.

He speaks and publishes regularly.

Jean-Pierre is the founder and a member of the board of the Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord Disorders - ICM, a state-approved foundation which is on its way to becoming the leading international research center in Europe in the Neurosciences.

Christopher Lippert Associate

London

Chris is a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales with experience acting for and against States, commercial parties and individuals in commercial arbitration and litigation. He often works on cross-border disputes, spanning the UK, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Romania, Italy and France.

Evan C. Hollander Partner

New York

Evan Hollander has over 25 years of experience representing debtors, secured creditors, holders of fulcrum securities, distressed asset acquirers, and independent directors in complex U.S. and cross-border restructuring matters. Mr. Hollander is equally comfortable in the courtroom as he is at the negotiating table and the boardroom, and has extensive experience crafting and implementing restructuring plans. He frequently writes on insolvency related topics and routinely appears on panels at industry conferences.

Kayla Delgado Grundy Senior Associate

San Francisco

Companies are often unwittingly out of compliance, particularly those which operate in states such as California, which have rapidly evolving, employee-friendly regulations. To prevent individual discrimination or harassment allegations from spiraling into class actions, Kayla finds innovative solutions to quickly and quietly resolve such matters. She applies that same finesse when handling highly sensitive trade secret matters, which also require quick and decisive action to preserve her client’s reputation.  

In addition to resolving problems before they escalate, Kayla also helps clients succeed in litigation when necessary. Undaunted by opposing counsel, government agencies or difficult fact patterns, she successfully defends clients from a variety of employment claims in state and federal court. Kayla has particular expertise in defending against large-scale class actions, including those based on systemic discrimination and pay equity claims or on wage and hour claims.

Kayla has an active pro bono practice where she counsels local non-profit organizations and helps navigate difficult employment issues so that the leaders of those organizations can focus on fulfilling their purpose and providing services to the community.

E. Joshua Rosenkranz Partner

New York

Josh has been named American Lawyer's “Litigator of the Year” twice, in addition to being a finalist for 2022. In 2012, the magazine dubbed him “the Defibrillator” based on his streak of appellate wins for companies that “appeared to be at death’s door,” and in 2017 it declared, he “still deserves the moniker we once gave him.”

In 2014, The Financial Times named Josh one of the 10 most innovative lawyers in the North American legal sector for his work “demystify[ing] the technical issues” and securing a victory in the blockbuster Federal Circuit appeal, Oracle v. Google. Chambers USA has reported, “He wins accolades for his ‘brilliant analysis and judgment.’ Clients appreciate how he ‘rethinks every case from the ground up,’ and add: ‘He can take the most complicated legal or technological issue and present it in a way that seems like common sense.’” Another edition of Chambers USA added: “‘His briefs are quite simply beautiful,’” and “clients describe his courtroom presence as ‘both commanding and accessible at the same time.’ He has the ‘perfect combination of persuasiveness, intelligence, wit, and deference.’”

Josh's practice covers a wide range of subjects, including intellectual property, financial services, securities, privacy, antitrust, federal preemption, insurance law, corporate governance, criminal law, and constitutional litigation. Among his recent clients are Cisco, Credit Suisse, Cox Communications, DISH Network, Genentech, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Mozilla, Oracle, Sonos, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Clients turn to Josh to win the highest stakes appeals, including appeals in cases that threaten the very survival of a business. For example:

• He represented Microsoft in an international cause célèbre in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the U.S. Government’s claim that it can serve warrants for emails stored overseas.
• He represented DISH Network in one of the most high-profile patent appeals in the country, successfully overturning an injunction that threatened the company's life.
• He has been lead counsel in multiple cases either defending or challenging verdicts over $1 billion.
• He represented Facebook in the high-profile battle waged by the founder's Harvard classmates, the Winklevoss twins, who laid claim to the idea for Facebook, winning a ruling from the Ninth Circuit to end the lawsuit.
• He won a landmark victory in a Supreme Court case that rescued the estimated $60 billion U.S. market of copyrighted goods manufactured abroad.
• He represented 36 law schools in a high-profile Supreme Court case against the Department of Defense.

Josh was the founding president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, one of the country’s foremost public interest firms. Over the course of eight years, he was the Brennan Center’s chief strategist on litigation and public policy advocacy. Before that, Josh founded the Office of the Appellate Defender, a public defender office specializing in criminal appeals.

Amy W Ray Partner

Washington, D.C.

Amy currently represents non-parties in multiple competition enforcement actions pending in federal district court, including in: U.S. v. Google, Colorado v. Google as well as FTC v. Facebook. A Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, she was also featured as one of Global Competition Review’s “40 Under 40 – Class of 2016” antitrust lawyers.

Among her notable transactional representations are matters at the intersection of antitrust and technology, such as her key role in Microsoft's acquisitions of LinkedIn and Skype.

Amy regularly advises both on strategic transactions as well as the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Additionally, she counsels on substantive antitrust issues that may arise in commercial relationships and compliance, such as vertical pricing and distribution.

The Legal 500 US 2020 rankings recently recognized Amy both for merger control and cartel investigations with a client testimonial:

“Amy Ray stands out as someone who has worked hard to understand our business and routinely brings her considerable experience and expertise to bear on important issues for us, always with a client-service focus. A true partner.”

Her pro bono matters include a case for which the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs recognized her team for its contribution to fair housing litigation. She also served for several years on the prestigious U.S. National Women's Law Center Leadership Advisory Committee.

Amy was an inaugural board member of the Law360 Competition Editorial Advisory Board and continues in that role today.

Thomas Wyatt Laryea Counsel

Washington, D.C.

Thomas formerly served as Assistant General Counsel at the International Monetary Fund, where he was responsible for the IMF’s legal relations in finance and economic surveillance with each of its member countries. As the only senior IMF lawyer in private practice, he offers distinctive insights to asset managers, real money investors and hedge funds on sovereign debt and restructurings as well as large scale corporate restructurings and project financings. His practice bridges legal and strategic advice on the transactional, public policy and dispute resolution aspects of international finance and investment.

Thomas has advised on several recent high-profile sovereign debt restructurings, including representing the Argentina Creditor Committee on the restructuring of $65 billion of Argentina’s foreign currency bonds. He also recently represented the Steering Members of the Committee on Bondholders in the reprofiling of Belize’s bonds.

He is recognized as a key lawyer in the Restructuring (Including Bankruptcy): Municipal category of The Legal 500 US 2022 directory. A client remarked that he “provided invaluable advice on the IMF policies, individual personalities and missions which helped us to understand the sovereign’s priorities with the IMF” that “will then frame our negotiations with the sovereign.” “Thomas is highly respected in the sovereign restructuring space.”

Thomas is an active thought leader and has published numerous articles on sovereign debt and international finance.

Raniero D'Aversa Partner

New York

Ron is the designated restructuring counsel to many leading financial institutions such as The Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America, Citibank, Commerzbank, Toronto-Dominion Bank and The Bank of Nova Scotia. He has represented clients in bankruptcies, workouts, DIP loans, distressed debt transactions, bankruptcy litigation, derivatives and distressed acquisitions. Ron has represented interests of financial institutions and investors in such restructuring and bankruptcy cases as Ocean Rig, Seadrill, CHC Helicopter, Erickson, Indiana Toll Road, Pocahontas Parkway, Eagle Bulk, Spyglass Films, American Airlines, Republic Airlines, Chemtura Corporation, Quebecor, AbitibiBowater, North Las Vegas, Ritchie Risk-Linked Strategies, Star Diamond, Lehman and Mesa Airlines.

In the Restructuring (Including Bankruptcy): Corporate category of The Legal 500 US directory, Ron’s clients praise his “practical and strategic approach.” Another noted, “Each time I discuss an issue with [him], I am both amazed at his ability to understand my concerns and his complete knowledge of the subject. He puts me at ease and there is never a time that I cannot reach him.” Regarded as a leader in financial restructurings by clients and peers alike, Ron understands every phase of a bankruptcy and restructuring matter and knows how to effectively position a client to control opposition and maximize results.