San Diego – July 13, 2021 – Cooley secured an arbitration win for Javo Beverage Company in a contractual dispute against its former co-founder Stephen Corey involving theft of Javo’s intellectual property. The arbitrator, retired Judge Jay C. Gandhi, issued an interim arbitration award on July 6, following a five-day remote hearing that involved live testimony from 10 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits. Partners Steve Strauss, Jeffrey Karr and Erin Trenda led the Cooley team representing Javo.
Ruling in favor of Javo on liability, the arbitrator found Corey breached his contractual obligations to the company through his “use and disclosure of Javo’s proprietary process” in violation of his employment and invention assignment agreements. The arbitrator found that “it appears an award of $50,000,000 in damages is appropriate” and ordered Corey “to refrain from continuing to breach the contracts at issue.”
Additionally, the arbitrator made factual findings in Javo’s favor on the dispute over patents and applications that Corey purportedly assigned to his new company, California Extraction Ventures, concluding that “it appears that the Arbitrator should declare that the patents were previously assigned to Javo” because they claim the same process Javo employed during Corey’s tenure. The arbitrator is providing the parties an opportunity to further brief the remedies issues, in addition to Javo’s entitlement to lawyers’ fees and costs as the prevailing party.
The arbitration is captioned Javo Beverage Co., Inc. v. Stephen Corey and relates to stayed federal litigation between Javo and Corey and CEV in the US District Court for the Southern District of California.
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