Angela Dunning

Angela litigates trademark, copyright, trade secrets and unfair competition cases – as well as other complex commercial disputes – for the world’s top companies. She has tried numerous cases to a jury verdict and has substantial experience in the federal appellate courts, including successful arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in high-profile, published cases.

Among these, Angela represented Google in an important genericide trademark suit, Elliott v. Google, in which the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed summary judgment that the GOOGLE trademark is not generic. She represented Blurb in the “monkey selfies” copyright suit, Naruto v. Slater, procuring affirmance of the lower court’s dismissal order on the ground that animals, as non-humans, lack statutory standing under the Copyright Act. Angela also obtained dismissal and affirmance for eBay on copyright preemption grounds of claims asserted under the California Resale Royalty Act (Close v. Sotheby’s).

In other notable cases, Angela served as lead counsel for 23andMe in a trademark dispute with Ancestry.com over rights to the term “ancestry,” and she co-led a team that procured dismissal with prejudice of two different cases against Meta Platforms – one of which, Dfinity Foundation v. Meta Platforms, was recognized by Law360 as a top trademark decision of 2022. Other intellectual property litigation clients Angela has represented include Twitter, Visual Supply Company, BGC Partners (Cantor Fitzgerald), Olive AI, Wish (ContextLogic) and Playboy Enterprises. She currently represents Midjourney, a prominent generative artificial intelligence platform, in connection with a class action lawsuit asserting copyright, Digital Millennium Copyright Act and right of publicity claims.

World Trademark Review describes Angela as a “high-caliber trial lawyer,” as well as a “great writer and strategist who leaves no stone unturned in developing her positions.” She also has been named one of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California by Daily Journal and a leading lawyer for commercial disputes by The Legal 500 US. In 2022, she taught trademark law and branding at UC Berkeley School of Law.

In 2008, as part of a firm-sponsored program, Angela served as an assistant district attorney for the City and County of San Francisco under then-District Attorney Kamala Harris, prosecuting criminal cases such as theft, battery and weapons-related charges.

While attending UC Davis School of Law, Angela received the American Jurisprudence award for legal writing and served as an extern for Judge Gregory G. Hollows, chief magistrate judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District of California