J. Max Rosen

J. Max Rosen

J. Max Rosen is a litigation associate in the San Francisco office of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Mr. Rosen’s practice focuses on appeals, intellectual property litigation, insurance litigation, and strategic advising. A thought leader, Mr. Rosen has a reputation for helping clients analyze and navigate the most complex and thorny legal issues in and out of the courtroom.

Mr. Rosen has extensive litigation experience at the trial and appellate level with all manner of cases. At the appellate level, he has drafted merits briefs in high-stakes appeals in the United States Supreme Court, the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeal, the California Supreme Court, and the California Courts of Appeal, and argued appeals in both the state and federal appellate courts. At the trial level, he has drafted and argued numerous successful summary judgment motions and motions to dismiss in state and federal courts across the country. Mr. Rosen’s intellectual property litigation includes copyright and trade secret cases for clients in the tech and media and entertainment industries.

Outside the courtroom, Mr. Rosen has taken on the most complicated legal questions for tech, insurance, and entertainment clients, providing answers to intractable problems that never reach the courtroom. 

Mr. Rosen also has a growing insurance practice focused on high-stakes bad faith litigation across the United States in state and federal court. In the past few years, Mr. Rosen has served as outside, national coordinating counsel for GEICO and has appeared on behalf of them in cases across the country—at both the trial and appellate level. He also advised clients, including pro bono clients, on difficult insurance questions and represented them in seeking coverage for disputes.

Mr. Rosen also maintains an active pro bono practice and has provided pro bono representation to clients challenging unconstitutional election procedures, seeking justice for officer-involved shootings, seeking immigration relief, and challenging unconstitutional seizures. 

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Rosen clerked for Judge Alison J. Nathan (at the time, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York) and Judge Debra Ann Livingston of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Mr. Rosen graduated first in his class and summa cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as developments chair of the Harvard Law Review. He received his B.A. in English and music, magna cum laude, from Amherst College.

Mr. Rosen is a co-founder of the Yleana Leadership Academy, a program that prepares low-income high school students for the SAT, teaches them entrepreneurship skills, and helps connect them to compassionate peers and mentors. He also loves to sing and has performed as a baritone in the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus since 2017 along with several other members of MTO’s San Francisco office.

Practice Areas

Industries

Education

  • Harvard Law School (J.D., summa cum laude, 2015), developments chair, Harvard Law Review, Fay Diploma (for graduating student with highest GPA), Sears Prize (for top two students in the second year)

  • Amherst College (B.A., magna cum laude, 2007) Phi Beta Kappa

Clerkships

  • Judge Alison J. Nathan, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 2016-2017
  • Judge Debra Ann Livingston, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 2015-2016

Bar Admissions

  • California

Experience

Some of Mr. Rosen's notable representations include: 

  • Representing the petitioner in In re Grand Jury, a case in the United States Supreme Court addressing the standard for applying the attorney-client privilege to dual-purpose communications.
  • Representing GEICO in numerous cases across the country, including:
    • A lawsuit pending in Nevada federal court stemming from a $65 million arbitration award issued against GEICO’s insured.
    • An ongoing case where a woman says she contracted a sexually transmitted disease in an insured man’s car. An arbitrator awarded the woman $5.2 million against the GEICO policyholder. GEICO filed a declaratory coverage action for a declaration of no coverage for the arbitration award.
    • Appeals across the country, including in state appellate and Supreme courts.
  • Representing Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.), before the California Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal, and California state court—ultimately resulting in the dismissal of White v. Block, an important lawsuit for numerous internet services companies facing claims of discrimination regarding their terms of service.
  • Representing The Walt Disney Company in copyright infringement suits relating to the song “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
  • Representing the Copyright Alliance and Recording Industry Association of America, in filing amicus briefs on intellectual property issues before the United States Supreme Court.
  • Representing Quotient, Inc., in successfully opposing a TRO filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
  • Representing Checkr, Inc., in successfully settling allegations of trade secrets theft, unfair competition, and breach of contract brought by Safety Holdings, Inc. over Checkr’s alleged development of a competing platform for pulling motor vehicle records. After discovering that the only trade secret identified in the complaint was publicly available online, we brought the case to a confidential settlement.
  • Representing TIBCO Software in a successful suit against vendor Apttus and former employees for theft of trade secrets.
  • Representing former officers of a bankrupt entity in successfully achieving dismissal on the pleadings of breach of fiduciary duty claims brought by the company’s Trustee on statute of limitations grounds.
  • Advising the Regents of the University of California on important constitutional and statutory questions.
  • Representing a landlord in Napa, in successfully winning its unlawful detainer eviction action against a corporate tenant on summary judgment and thereafter receiving an award of over $2 million in attorneys’ fees.
  • Representing the Coalition on Homelessness in the California Court of Appeal challenging as unconstitutional the warrantless towing of safely and lawfully parked vehicles in San Francisco solely on the basis of unpaid parking tickets.
  • Representing plaintiffs in the Fourth Circuit challenging the use of winner-take-all to allocate electoral votes in South Carolina under the Equal Protection Clause and Voting Rights Act.
  • Representing a copyright plaintiff in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in challenging Texas’s assertion of sovereign immunity as a defense against copyright infringement.

Speaking Engagements

  • Speaker, 16th Annual Entertainment & Media Law Conference, National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, Jan. 17, 2020 (addressing the Supreme Court’s decision in Allen v. Cooper and sovereign immunity for states defending against copyright infringement claims)

Practice Areas

Industries

Education

  • Harvard Law School (J.D., summa cum laude, 2015), developments chair, Harvard Law Review, Fay Diploma (for graduating student with highest GPA), Sears Prize (for top two students in the second year)

  • Amherst College (B.A., magna cum laude, 2007) Phi Beta Kappa

Clerkships

  • Judge Alison J. Nathan, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 2016-2017
  • Judge Debra Ann Livingston, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 2015-2016

Bar Admissions

  • California