Kenneth M. Fitzgerald is an experienced trial lawyer, practicing business litigation with an emphasis on complex commercial cases and intellectual property disputes. Before joining the firm, Mr. Fitzgerald was a partner at Latham & Watkins, where he successfully tried numerous cases to verdict in state and federal courts throughout the country. Mr. Fitzgerald has handled a wide variety of commercial litigation matters involving contracts, business torts, trademarks, trade dress, copyrights, false advertising, unfair competition, insurance coverage, construction, defamation, fraudulent conveyance, antitrust, securities, white collar crime, employment, probate and ERISA issues.
In the intellectual property area, Mr. Fitzgerald has successfully prosecuted and defended copyright, trademark, trade dress, trade secret and false advertising/unfair competition actions for Akamai Technologies, Bare Escentuals, Charlotte Russe, the Famous San Diego Chicken, Gen-Probe, HBO, Minnesota Manufacturing & Mining (3M), Nissan, Rice University, ScubaPro, TaylorMade Golf, and other intellectual property owners. In other business litigation, he has represented the National Football League, AOL, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Barratt Developments, CIBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, DirecTV, Fluor, Hughes Network Systems, Gateway, Hilton, Hyatt, Hydranautics, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, Montrose Chemical, Neiman-Marcus, Nintendo, Oracle, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Reebok, Reed Elsevier, Relational Investors, Safeway, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Societe Generale, Sony Electronics, Teledyne, Themis Bar Review, United Technologies, Viasat and others. He has also served as a Special Assistant District Attorney, prosecuting multiple criminal jury trials.
Mr. Fitzgerald has been ranked several times as one of the Top 10 attorneys in San Diego by San Diego Super Lawyers, and was featured in a 2015 Super Lawyers Magazine cover story. Best Lawyers in America named Mr. Fitzgerald the sole Intellectual Property "Lawyer of the Year" for San Diego Litigation in its 2015 publication. He has been repeatedly recognized by Best Lawyers in America as one of the top attorneys in the Commercial Litigation and Intellectual Property specialties. Super Lawyers has repeatedly ranked him in the "Top 10" and "Top 50" attorneys in San Diego, and he has been recognized on numerous occasions by the San Diego Daily Transcript as one of the "Top Attorneys" in San Diego for corporate and intellectual property litigation. The San Diego Business Journal also named him to its 2015 and 2014 "Best of the Bar" recognition. Mr. Fitzgerald has served on the Board of Governors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers San Diego Chapter, and on the San Diego Bar Association's Committee for Civility, Integrity & Professionalism.
Before joining Fitzgerald Knaier LLP, Mr. Fitzgerald practiced at the global law firm of Latham & Watkins for nearly 20 years, becoming one of the firm's most experienced trial lawyers. Prior to joining Latham & Watkins, Mr. Fitzgerald served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Howard B. Turrentine, United States District Judge for the Southern District of California. He has appeared on NBC's Today Show, Public Radio International's Marketplace program, and he has published articles or presented seminars on advanced intellectual property litigation, copyright and trade secret law, electronic discovery, false advertising and unfair competition law and other litigation topics. In January 2010, he ventured out to practice in a trial-oriented litigation boutique setting, with the rate flexibility and entrepreneurial freedom that Fitzgerald Knaier LLP provides.
Mr. Fitzgerald has served two terms on the Board of Governors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, San Diego Chapter. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Shepherd Society, which supports the Shepherd School of Music at his alma mater Rice University, where he endowed a full tuition scholarship for trumpet performance majors. A former full-time professional musician, Mr. Fitzgerald has performed with the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and the Festival Guadalquivir Orchestra in Tarija, Bolivia. He is currently the principal trumpet of the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra.
