Lawyers on the Samsung-Rambus Settlement

Billion-dollar deals are a dime a dozen for corporate lawyers, but it seems like litigators don’t get to use that third comma nearly as often.

We’re feeling generous, though, so we’ll round up and let a litigation team get their day in the sun with news of a $900 million settlement and the legal teams involved.

Rambus, a manufacturer of new technology involving accelerated memory chips, will be receiving a nice payday from Samsung in a settlement of patent-infringement and antitrust claims.

The lawyers on the deal after the jump.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Under the agreement—which includes new technology collaboration between the companies—Samsung will make an upfront payment to Rambus of $200 million, plus quarterly payments of about $25 million over five years, the companies said. Samsung, of South Korea, also agreed to buy $200 million worth of newly issued Rambus stock.

Weil Gotshal partner Matt Powers (Northwestern BA ’79, Harvard JD ’82) represented Samsung, so this result was a nice turnaround from the disastrous $290 million judgment against his other big client last year, Microsoft ($40 million of which is attributed to Powers’s misconduct). Powers, who got the feature treatment in SuperLawyers last summer, started out at Orrick Herrington after graduating, but lateralled into Weil ten years later.

The Rambus team was led by partners Gregory Stone (CalTech BS ’74, Yale JD ’77) and Steven Perry (North Carolina BA ’78, Yale JD ’81) of Munger, Tolles & Olson, as well as Wilson Sonsini’s Aaron Alter (Harvard BA, JD/MBA ’85) for the corporate matters.

None of the firms has issued a press release yet, so we can’t put the other litigators’ names in here. They’ll just have to tell their parents they almost worked on a billion-dollar matter.

Related posts:

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2. Strike 2 for Weil/Microsoft
3. Litigators Finally Get Third Comma
4. The Deal’s Up-and-Coming Lawyers
5. CEO Blames Lawyers for Company’s Bankruptcy