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Lisa I. Damji

Lisa Damji combines her experience litigating intellectual property, business torts and commercial matters with her practical knowledge of the issues facing emergent businesses.

As a member of Baker Hostetler’s Intellectual Property Litigation group, Ms. Damji has litigated complex trademark, e-commerce, copyright, trade secret and unfair competition disputes in the aerospace, apparel, home furnishings, pet products and publishing industries—working to protect clients against domestic and overseas infringers in federal courts. Ms. Damji has represented copyright owners of various works and mediums of expression, including clothing and accessories, graphic, pictorial, literary and audiovisual recordings.

Ms. Damji’s experience in intellectual property litigation began in 1999 when she represented professional athletes in a right of publicity and misappropriation class action concerning a computer video game that used their names and likenesses. Ms. Damji’s aggressive advocacy resulted in a successful settlement on behalf of the athletes.

Ms. Damji now helps clients protect their intellectual property rights through proactive measures, such as copyright, trademark (domestic and international) and patent registrations, licensing agreements and registration with the U.S. Customs Department. When litigation is necessary, she draws upon her experience trying cases in court, administrative proceedings, arbitrations and appeals. Innovative companies, such as one of the largest Internet retailers and one of the fastest-growing children’s shoe companies in the country, call on Ms. Damji to assist them with complex legal matters.

For the past five years, Ms. Damji was named a Southern California Rising Star by Law & Politics and the publishers of Los Angeles Magazine. Ms. Damji has written articles on webcasting for the Internet Newsletter and the legal implications of spoliation of evidence.

Prior to attending law school, Ms. Damji was a reporter for the Los Angeles Bureau of the Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. Ms. Damji reported on noteworthy trials and general-interest stories pertaining to the American legal system and politics. During law school, Ms. Damji served as a summer law clerk to the Honorable W. Earl Britt of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. 

Representative Matters: Litigation and Trials

• Ms. Damji obtained a judgment for a shoe manufacturer that it is the owner of a distinctive trade dress in its footwear and packaging in a trade dress infringement, dilution and unfair competition action.
• Ms. Damji was a member of the trial team that successfully defended a publicly traded accounting services provider in a jury trial in San Diego Superior Court. Plaintiff claimed that our client breached the parties’ contract, committed fraud and failed to reimburse monies owed to him for the increased income tax liability he incurred following a merger and acquisition of his company. After a jury verdict for our client, the California Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s decision and its pre-trial judgments.  
• As part of a two-person trial team, Ms. Damji was instrumental in successfully defending a financial services company during an administrative trial before the Office of Administrative Hearings in 2006. Ms. Damji’s innovative defensive strategy enabled the financial services company to maintain its finance lenders license, which the Department of Corporations sought to revoke on the basis that the financial services company was engaging in an allegedly unlawful practice regarding consumer loans.
• Lead counsel for a FORTUNE 100 bank in commercial real estate foreclosures and related litigation. On the bank’s behalf, Ms. Damji obtained marketable title to commercial properties located in jurisdictions throughout California.
• Defeated motions for preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders in the areas of real estate, intellectual property and anti-counterfeiting litigation.

Representative Matters: Settlement, Mediation and Arbitration

• Obtained a favorable settlement for plaintiff, a manufacturer of aerospace components, in an action concerning misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition.
• Successfully settled a case for a home furnishings designer brought to enforce the designer’s copyright ownership rights in a design against its competitor.
• Worked as part of a multi-office team that achieved spectacular results for a major oil company in an environmental suit that culminated in a six-week arbitration to decide responsibility for the cost of cleanup of petroleum contamination.
• Lead counsel defending a major financial services company against fraud allegations. Ms. Damji negotiated the dismissal of the entire action during an early mediation with no concessions to the plaintiff.

Ms. Damji is a member of the State Bars of California and North Carolina, the California Copyright Conference and the Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law Sections of the American Bar Association and Los Angeles County Bar Association.