Alston & Bird continues to grow its California practice with the addition of Yuri Mikulka as partner in the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice in its Los Angeles office.
Arriving from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, Mikulka brings more than 20 years of experience representing clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies in the U.S. and multinational companies based in Asia and Europe. In addition to litigating patent, trademark and copyright infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and commercial disputes, she counsels some of the world’s most innovative companies on intellectual property rights, brand protection, and legal issues related to consumer technology, goods, and services.
“Yuri is no stranger to high-stakes litigation,” said Mike Newton, co-chair of Alston & Bird’s Intellectual Property Practice. “She knows that intellectual property is the lifeblood of many companies in the technology, life sciences, and other industries who are threatened with increasingly sophisticated litigation and who want trusted legal advisers and innovative strategies to protect their assets and, when needed, to win these types of lawsuits.”
Mikulka’s notable successes as lead counsel include securing a jury verdict of willful patent and copyright infringement; obtaining judgments of noninfringement and invalidity in patent infringement actions between competitors; excluding a leading expert in a patent infringement case; prevailing in a Ninth Circuit appeal and leading a Federal Circuit appeal; and obtaining sanctions and attorneys’ fees in favor of her clients.
As one of the few Asian-American woman lawyers to lead trials and high-stakes litigation involving patent infringement and consumer technology, Mikulka has been honored as one of the Daily Journal’s “Top Intellectual Property Attorneys” in California.
An industry leader, Mikulka is a member of the governing body of the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation and member of the executive committee of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. She also serves as a board member and co-chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
Mikulka also speaks and writes regularly on intellectual property rights, brand protection, litigation strategies, and ethics. She is a former guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and University of California, Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering.
“Yuri is an incredibly well-regarded litigator and exciting addition to our team who opens new opportunities for our clients in resolving mission-critical intellectual property disputes,” said Thomas Wingard, partner-in-charge of Alston & Bird’s Los Angeles office. “She joins our deep bench of high-caliber litigators and other attorneys as we continue to grow the office to address increasing client demand across a number of our practices, including intellectual property.”
Mikulka is the latest addition to Alston & Bird’s Los Angeles office and the firm’s continued West Coast expansion. In 2017, the firm extended its California presence by opening a new office in San Francisco and expanding in Los Angeles with nine new litigation attorneys, including partners Bo Phillips and Michael Agoglia, who The American Lawyer named among the top 25 laterals of 2017. Also that year, the firm added construction and government contracts partner John Hanover in Los Angeles. The hiring continued throughout 2018 with the additions of environmental partner Jeffrey Dintzer and counsel Matt Wickersham and class action partners Jeffrey Rosenfeld and Grant Alexander and counsel Rachel Lowe in Los Angeles, and products liability and commercial litigation partner Steven Selna in San Francisco. In January 2019, the firm added Scott Adamson as corporate partner in Los Angeles.