Steve Zipperstein prosecuted failed savings-and-loan associations in
the 1980s and investigated the government's siege of the Branch Davidian
compound in Waco, Texas, in the '90s. Now the battle-hardened lawyer
has joined Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry to fight its critics.
Zipperstein,
who turns 54 this month, was lured out of retirement in Santa Barbara,
California, last year by an offer to become BlackBerry's chief legal
officer. He joined the Waterloo, Ontario-based company in July to handle
everything from patent disputes to privacy issues, and says his time as
a Justice Department lawyer and federal prosecutor in Los Angeles will
serve him well in defending BlackBerry's interests.
"I was really
blessed to be able to combine jury trial courtroom experience with
inside-the-Beltway Washington political policy experience," Zipperstein
said in an interview.
After years of market-share losses,
BlackBerry is trying to stem a customer exodus to Google's Android and
Apple's iOS, and the company's taking a more assertive legal approach to
disputes. That includes challenging analysts who publish reports that
BlackBerry says are untrue and lobbying for legislation to thwart
companies derided as patent trolls, which obtain patents to demand
royalties rather than making their own products.
One of
Zipperstein's targets: Detwiler Fenton & Co., a Boston-based
financial-services firm. Detwiler said in an April report that return
rates of the new BlackBerry Z10 were unusually high and in some cases
exceeded sales of the phone.
It was a charge that BlackBerry and
Zipperstein refused to let stand unchallenged. The company asked both
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities
Commission to investigate the report. Zipperstein at the time called it
either "a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation."
BlackBerry's stock fell almost 8 percent on April 11 after the Detwiler report appeared.
"Everyone
is entitled to their opinion," Zipperstein said. "It was characterized
as a statement of actual fact, and it was wrong."
Zipperstein
declined to discuss where the investigations now stand, as did
representatives from the SEC and the Ontario Securities Commission.
Neither Anne Buckley, Detwiler Fenton's chief compliance officer, nor
her colleague Steve Abbiuso returned responded to messages seeking
comment.
Zipperstein's response to Detwiler Fenton was very much
in character, said William Petersen, general counsel at Verizon
Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier. Zipperstein worked as
Verizon's general counsel from 2003 until he retired in 2011.
"As a
former federal prosecutor and investigator, he approached the job very
creatively and aggressively," Petersen said in an interview. "He never
wanted Verizon to be on the defensive, and that really helped."
Zipperstein
also backs U.S. legislation that would force plaintiffs in patent
litigation to pay the costs of the defendant, an attempt to dissuade
frivolous lawsuits.
"For far too long, that conduct has gone on unchallenged," he said.
A
week after Zipperstein joined the company in July, a federal jury
awarded Mformation Technologies $147.2 million in a patent-infringement
case against BlackBerry. Zipperstein went back to the judge to make the
argument that Mformation had failed to meet the burden of proof. Six
weeks later, the trial judge overturned the verdict and threw it out.
Mformation
appealed the decision in September. Stephanie Markham, a spokeswoman
for the Edison, New Jersey-based company, didn't return respond to
messages seeking comment.
"BlackBerry is no longer an easy target
for patent lawsuits," Zipperstein said. "We're fighting back and we're
going to continue to fight back."
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