The Daily Journal recognized White & Case partner Yar Chaikovsky in its 2025 issue featuring the Top Intellectual Property lawyers working in patent, trademark and copyright litigation.
In his profile, Yar spoke about cases he is working on, including representing TikTok and ByteDance in defense of copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation claims relating to source code used for audio and video editing functionality filed by a Chinese tech company.
"This is a lot more than basic patent work," Yar said. "The case is about code, and there are overlapping torts involved." The piece also noted that the case could have implications for future copyright suits by foreign entities under the Berne Convention, especially where a foreign entity asserts infringement of foreign copyrights by acts allegedly occurring outside the US.
In regards to the Intellectual Property market, Yar said, after the downturn in 2008, "people looked for other ways to invest, and many turned to patents." After Supreme Court rulings in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc narrowed the scope of patentable subject matter, he noted, legal conflicts in the tech world broadened to include additional claims.
"Now we've become tech tort litigators, looking for what we can bring to bear in these disputes beyond patents alone – such as copyright or trade secret claims and attendant torts like antitrust and product liability and civil RICO with automatic damages trebling."
See the full The Daily Journal article here.
Press contact
For more information please speak to your local media contact.
