John P. Lahad

I joined Susman Godfrey in 2010 after a year-long clerkship with the Honorable David Folsom, then-Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Since then I have represented plaintiffs and defendants in several matters involving intellectual property, securities, oil and gas, managed care, and general commercial disputes.

Current Representative Matters

I represent Linde Engineering North America in its dispute with Arrow Field Services and Crestwood Midstream Partners regarding Arrow and Crestwood’s refusal to reimburse Linde for costs associated with the construction of the Bear Den 2 Plant, a gas processing plant in North Dakota. Crestwood ceased paying Linde for its work once the plant was up and running, thus breaching the parties’ contract and violating Texas Prompt Payment law. This case is pending in Harris County, Texas.

I represent STC.UNM, the technology commercialization and licensing arm of the University of New Mexico, in patent infringement lawsuits against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and GlobalFoundries, pending in the Western District of Texas. The defendants infringe STC.UNM’s patent related to finFET semiconductor manufacturing processes used to make the latest generation of processors. UNM professors drive innovation in semiconductor technology—the lead inventor Dr. Steven Brueck has earned 80 issued patents—and I am honored to represent the University in this matter.

I represent the University of Texas in a breach of license case against exclusive licensee Idexx Laboratories alleging significant underpayment of royalties due as part of Idexx’s exclusive license to the University’s Lyme disease-related patents. I am honored to represent the University of Texas in its attempts to recover the true value of its license from Idexx.

I represent Arendi SARL in several patent infringement cases pending in the District of Delaware. Arendi alleges that its patented information handling and linking technology is being infringed by Apple, Google, LG and other mobile device manufacturers.

I represent and have represented Globus Medical, Inc. as a defendant in multiple patent infringement cases pending across the country. Against Flexuspine, Inc., a Tyler, Texas-based plaintiff with Tyler, Texas-based inventors, I helped secure a favorable defense jury verdict after trial in Tyler. After a week-long trial, the jury found the asserted patents non-infringed and invalid.

I currently represent Preston L. Marshall, the grandson of J. Howard Marshall II, in several lawsuits involving the Marshall family’s estate and related trusts. These lawsuits are pending in Probate Court in Harris County Texas, state court in Harris County Texas, and state and federal court in Louisiana. I hope to further leverage my work in this significant trusts and estates matter in other trust and estate matters.

Past Representative Matters

With Joseph Grinstein, I represented PACT XPP Technologies, GMBH in its patent infringement suit against Xilinx, Inc. and Avnet, Inc., leading players in the field programmable gate array industry, in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division.  At the end of the week-long trial, the jury found that Xilinx and Avnet infringed PACT patents, rejected the defendants’ claim the patents were invalid, and found Xilinx’s infringement to be willful.

With Chanler Langham, I represented Bellaire, Texas-based Mobius Medical Systems, LP in its suit against Sun Nuclear Corporation.  Mobius and its founder Dr. Nathan Childress came to me after a former exclusive distributor released a competitive product that incorporated Mobius’s confidential and proprietary trade secrets.  We filed suit and immediately obtained a preliminary injunction enjoining Sun Nuclear from promoting, marketing, and selling the offending product. The case settled about a year later.  Part of the settlement included this permanent injunction.

With Justin Nelson, Parker Folse, Max Tribble, and others at Susman Godfrey, I represented Rockstar Consortium US LP and Netstar Technologies LLC in their patent infringement suit against Google in the Eastern District of Texas.  Rockstar and Netstar alleged infringement of several patents related to search-related advertising. I handled several phases of the litigation. In addition to defending key witnesses, I helped lay the foundation for favorable Markman rulings. The case settled before trial.

With Brooke Taylor and others from Susman Godfrey, I represented Intellectual Ventures I, LLC in a patent infringement suit against Symantec Corporation and Trend Micro, Inc. pending in the District of Delaware before the Hon. Leonard Stark.  The patents-in-suit involved technology related to email and network security.  I embraced my role as the technology guru in this matter, pored through thousands of documents, deposed several developers and programmers, and learned the inner workings of defendants’ accused products.  Armed with this deep understanding, I took several key depositions in the case. At trial against Symantec, I handled our invalidity case, cross-examining Symantec’s expert and presenting our rebuttal expert. The jury maintained the validity of each patent at trial.

I truly enjoy and excel at high-stakes intellectual property cases, but I have augmented my intellectual property expertise with several non-intellectual property matters.

For example, with Geoffrey Harrison and Kenneth McNeil, I represent Maghreb Petroleum Exploration S.A. and Mideast Fund for Morocco Ltd. in a suit to enforce a $122 million judgment from a court in the Kingdom of Morocco against Patron Tequila co-founder John Paul DeJoria under Texas’s version of the Uniform Foreign Country Money Judgments Recognition Act. On September 30, 2015, the Fifth Circuit reversed the trial court’s determination that the Morocco Court judgment should not be recognized. Read the Fifth Circuit’s opinion here.  In securing this result, I read and analyzed nearly every publicly available decision in the U.S. involving the Uniform Recognition Act.

With Brian Melton, Jonathan Ross, and Chanler Langham, I represented local healthcare provider Humble Surgical Hospital in a suit against health insurance giant Cigna. In this ERISA case, Cigna claims that it should not have to pay for over $30 million dollars’ worth of medically necessary procedures provided by Humble to Cigna members, labeling Humble a “fee-forgiver.” In January 2016, the Honorable Judge Hoyt of the Southern District of Texas presided over a bench trial. In June 2016, Judge Hoyt issued his ruling, finding in our favor on every issue and awarding $11.4 million in damages, $2.3 million in ERISA penalties, and attorneys’ fees.

With Kenny Marks, Jonathan Ross, and others at Susman Godfrey, I represented the trustee of the Circuit City Liquidating Trust as an opt-out in an anti-trust class action matter regarding cathode ray tubes.  We alleged that various manufacturers of cathode ray tubes used in televisions and computer monitors engaged in anti-competitive activity in violation of U.S. Anti-trust laws.  The case settled before trial.

With James Southwick, I represented a group of Beaumont, Texas-area plaintiffs in a FINRA arbitration involving the Medical Capital Ponzi scheme. My clients collectively invested millions of dollars in Medical Capital’s allegedly bogus notes.   Mr. Southwick and I were able to obtain a favorable settlement for our clients, who thought they’d lost it all.

I have been selected as a Rising Star by Law & Politics Magazine (Thomson Reuters) every year from 2014 to the present. In 2021 I was named a Super Lawyer by the same publication.

When not practicing law, I enjoy spending time with my beautiful and supportive wife and our three wonderful children.

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