Rohit K. Singla is a litigation partner who focuses on antitrust, intellectual property, and complex employment disputes at trial and appeal.
He represents clients in a wide range of technologies, including software, entertainment, videogames, on-demand services, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Mr. Singla has received numerous accolades including being recognized by the Daily Journal as one of the Top Antitrust Lawyers and one of the Top Labor and Employment Lawyers in California. He is consistently ranked in Chambers USA in antitrust. Mr. Singla was recognized as a 2024 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) for historical litigation against the City and County of Los Angeles that led to a preliminary injunction eliminating cash bail for individuals arrested on most low-level, non-violent offenses. He also received the 2024 Keta Taylor Colby Award from the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco for helping to secure a historic victory ending warrantless parking ticket tows in San Francisco and across California.
Mr. Singla’s antitrust work includes representing clients in cases involving monopolization, horizontal and vertical conspiracies, sham petitioning, resale price maintenance and Robinson-Patman Act violations. He was co-lead counsel for the defense in FTC v. Actavis, the seminal Supreme Court case that set the legal standard for antitrust challenges to patent settlement.
Mr. Singla has a particular specialty in the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property, such as antitrust challenges to so-called reverse payment patent settlements, claims of sham patent litigation, technological tying and intellectual property defenses to antitrust claims.
He also has significant intellectual property experience in a range of areas including patent litigation, copyright, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and trade secret claims. Mr. Singla was lead appellate counsel in Therasense Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson, in which the en banc Federal Circuit reformed the doctrine of inequitable conduct.
His employment work focuses on representing technology companies such as Lyft, Angi, and Instacart in large, complex misclassification disputes that involve government investigations, government enforcement actions, and private plaintiff cases.
Mr. Singla has an active pro bono practice that has recently included the representation of more than a dozen families that were separated at the border during the Trump administration, an appeal relating to federally mandated educational advisory boards for migrant workers, and challenging the century-old bail system in California that keeps poor people in jail merely because they cannot afford bail. He is a member of the board of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, including two years as chair of the board, and the board of governors of Public Advocates, a public interest law firm.
Mr. Singla received a B.S. with honors in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he was the first undergraduate to be awarded a teaching fellowship in the Computer Science department and spent four years as a teaching fellow. He then spent two years with McKinsey & Company’s Knowledge Management group in New York.
After receiving his law degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, Mr. Singla clerked for Judge Alfred T. Goodwin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena and served as a research fellow at Stanford Law School’s Law, Science & Technology Program.
Experience
Mr. Singla’s representative matters include:
- Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as lead counsel in defense of claims by the Federal Trade Commission and MDL class actions asserting antitrust challenges to patent settlements. The matter led to the landmark Actavis decision by the United States Supreme Court. FTC v. Actavis; In re Androgel Antitrust Litig.
- Lyft Inc.
- in numerous misclassification actions in jurisdictions across the country.
- with respect to an antitrust challenge to its hiring and pricing practices brought by a purported class of private car service providers.
- Angi, Inc. in the defense of a preliminary injunction sought by California district attorneys seeking to force the reclassification of independent service professionals as employees.
- Instacart in misclassification and arbitration disputes.
- NCAA as trial counsel in a nationwide class action asserting antitrust and intellectual property claims relating to NCAA rules that allegedly preclude collegiate basketball and football athletes from being paid for the alleged use of their name, image and likeness.
- Takeda Pharmaceuticals as lead counsel in:
- purported antitrust MDL class actions brought by direct and indirect purchasers of Actos and/or Actoplus Met in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- obtaining denial of class certification to two proposed classes of indirect purchasers alleging that Takeda’s conduct in licensing and enforcing patents delayed entry into the market of a generic version of the muscle relaxant Skelaxin.
- Leegin Creative Leather Products (now known as Brighton Collectibles) as national antitrust counsel defending against class action challenges to alleged resale price maintenance agreements; obtained dismissals in Tennessee, Texas and Kansas trial and appellate courts, on remand from landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.
- Microsoft in wide-ranging antitrust and intellectual property litigation concerning technological measures in the Xbox 360 videogame console designed to preclude unauthorized accessories. The litigation included DMCA, copyright, trade secret, patent, design patent, trademark and Kodak “aftermarket” antitrust claims.
- Abbott Laboratories as one of three lead counsel in multiple nationwide antitrust class action challenges to patent settlements and patent litigation. Prevailed in lengthy jury trial and obtained numerous ground-breaking appellate victories in Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, establishing standards for patent settlements, decertifying direct-purchaser class, and invalidating class action opt-outs.
- MPAA co-lead trial counsel in precedent-setting DMCA and antitrust dispute over the “RealDVD” copying system developed by Real Networks.
Speaking Engagements
- Speaker, “Inequitable Conduct After Regeneron: What Litigators, Patent Prosecutors, and Patent Owners Need to Know,” IP Chat Channel Webinar, Intellectual Property Owners Association, January 2019
Education
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Harvard Law School (J.D., magna cum laude, 1998); teaching fellow, L.L.M.; program primary editor, Harvard Human Rights Journal, 1996-1998
-
Stanford University (M.A., 1993)
-
Stanford University (B.S., with honors, 1992) David Starr Jordan Fellow
Clerkships
- Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 1998-1999
Bar Admissions
- California
- New York
Experience
Mr. Singla’s representative matters include:
- Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as lead counsel in defense of claims by the Federal Trade Commission and MDL class actions asserting antitrust challenges to patent settlements. The matter led to the landmark Actavis decision by the United States Supreme Court. FTC v. Actavis; In re Androgel Antitrust Litig.
- Lyft Inc.
- in numerous misclassification actions in jurisdictions across the country.
- with respect to an antitrust challenge to its hiring and pricing practices brought by a purported class of private car service providers.
- Angi, Inc. in the defense of a preliminary injunction sought by California district attorneys seeking to force the reclassification of independent service professionals as employees.
- Instacart in misclassification and arbitration disputes.
- NCAA as trial counsel in a nationwide class action asserting antitrust and intellectual property claims relating to NCAA rules that allegedly preclude collegiate basketball and football athletes from being paid for the alleged use of their name, image and likeness.
- Takeda Pharmaceuticals as lead counsel in:
- purported antitrust MDL class actions brought by direct and indirect purchasers of Actos and/or Actoplus Met in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- obtaining denial of class certification to two proposed classes of indirect purchasers alleging that Takeda’s conduct in licensing and enforcing patents delayed entry into the market of a generic version of the muscle relaxant Skelaxin.
- Leegin Creative Leather Products (now known as Brighton Collectibles) as national antitrust counsel defending against class action challenges to alleged resale price maintenance agreements; obtained dismissals in Tennessee, Texas and Kansas trial and appellate courts, on remand from landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.
- Microsoft in wide-ranging antitrust and intellectual property litigation concerning technological measures in the Xbox 360 videogame console designed to preclude unauthorized accessories. The litigation included DMCA, copyright, trade secret, patent, design patent, trademark and Kodak “aftermarket” antitrust claims.
- Abbott Laboratories as one of three lead counsel in multiple nationwide antitrust class action challenges to patent settlements and patent litigation. Prevailed in lengthy jury trial and obtained numerous ground-breaking appellate victories in Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, establishing standards for patent settlements, decertifying direct-purchaser class, and invalidating class action opt-outs.
- MPAA co-lead trial counsel in precedent-setting DMCA and antitrust dispute over the “RealDVD” copying system developed by Real Networks.
News
Speaking Engagements
- Speaker, “Inequitable Conduct After Regeneron: What Litigators, Patent Prosecutors, and Patent Owners Need to Know,” IP Chat Channel Webinar, Intellectual Property Owners Association, January 2019
Industries
Education
-
Harvard Law School (J.D., magna cum laude, 1998); teaching fellow, L.L.M.; program primary editor, Harvard Human Rights Journal, 1996-1998
-
Stanford University (M.A., 1993)
-
Stanford University (B.S., with honors, 1992) David Starr Jordan Fellow
Clerkships
- Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 1998-1999
Bar Admissions
- California
- New York