Partners Robert Galvin and Mark Selwyn have been named to the Daily Journal's annual list of California's Top Intellectual Property Lawyers, recognizing the most impressive attorney achievements in the field of intellectual property from successfully arguing novel theories of law and winning significant cases to protecting client portfolios.

Galvin won a precedent-setting case for website domain company GoDaddy Inc. against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a cybersquatting dispute over the Academy's trademarked names "Oscar" and "Academy Awards." The Academy demanded $29.3 million under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, claiming that GoDaddy had made $90 million in revenue from placement of ads on 293 web domains containing "Oscar" or "Academy." US District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. found that the Academy failed to prove GoDaddy acted with a bad faith intent to profit.

"We showed that our client registers a domain every second and we showed that the steps GoDaddy took to protect against cybersquatting were reasonable," Galvin shared with the Daily Journal. Read more about the case in Galvin's feature, published by the Daily Journal in  August 2016.

This year marks the ninth year that Selwyn, co-chair of the IP Litigation Group, has been honored. Selwyn led the management of the worldwide defense of a tech giant against widely known patent infringement claims.

As Selwyn shared with the Daily Journal, “I was proud to lead a team with deep expertise litigating patents claimed to be essential to cellular standards," he said. "The technology involved in such cases can, at first, appear very complicated and even intimidating. A successful defense requires the ability to explain the patents and the cellular standards—and how they are different—in a clear, simple and direct manner."