During one of the countless pretrial hearings in the legal showdown between Silicon Valley titans Oracle and Google, U.S. District Judge William Alsup offered up a simple description of their billion-dollar conflict.
"This," the veteran federal judge said, "is the World Series" of high-tech law cases.
When the two sides square off Monday for trial in their high-stakes patent and copyright feud, the umpire in that legal World Series will be Alsup. The judge is a 66-year-old, no-nonsense son of the South who has been running one of the tightest courtroom ships in the Bay Area since former President Bill Clinton put him on the bench in 1999.
Courtly but sometimes curt with lawyers who cross him, Alsup has put his stamp on a host of crucial cases in his nearly 13 years in black robes, from presiding over a rare federal death penalty prosecution to jailing home run king Barry Bonds' personal trainer for his refusal to testify in the government's perjury probe.
This is a judge who arrives at work in predawn darkness, never later than 5:30 a.m., and has been known to run the steps of the 20-floor federal building for his exercise. He leads mountaineering expeditions in the High Sierra, and his Ansel Adams-style photography adorns the walls of the attorney lounges in the San Francisco and San Jose courthouses.
And as lawyers for Oracle and Google have discovered, Alsup lives up to his reputation for brilliance and brashness: He at one
point ordered high-level settlement talks in a last-ditch attempt to avoid this week's trial. The order later forced the two companies' powerful chieftains, Larry Ellison and Larry Page, to meet personally. The two executives could not settle their differences.
"He can be out-of-the-box," said Matt Borden, a former law clerk. "But it's so intellectually stimulating. This is a guy who is thinking a million miles an hour all of the time."
During an early morning interview last week in his chambers, Alsup discussed everything from his reputation for running a tough courtroom to his days as a student fighting for civil rights causes on the Mississippi State campus during the 1960s.
Alsup would not discuss the Oracle-Google clash, in which a jury will consider Oracle's claims that the search giant's Android mobile phone technology infringes on its patents. But he downplayed the suggestion that overseeing such a big case may change his courtroom style.
"It probably affects me some," said Alsup, his Mississippi upbringing still flavoring his words. "But, really, in most ways, no."
In fact, he has thus far been vintage Alsup in the Oracle-Google case, often coming up with novel ways to shape such an epic trial. At one point, he took the unusual step of enlisting an independent expert to evaluate the damages at stake after questioning Oracle's estimates.
Oracle and Google's elite lawyers can expect a judge with an entrenched way of conducting courtroom business. They will also find a judge who makes his views known -- during a lengthy racketeering gang trial last year, an exasperated Alsup told the lawyers they were "the most contentious group I have seen in 40 years."
"It is like walking into a blast furnace every day," a legal blog quoted him saying.
"I do think I have high expectations," Alsup said. "It's not because of me. It's because of the courts. This is the United States District Court, where the practice should be at the highest level. It's not to be mean to a lawyer for the sake of being tough on them."
Alsup calls the complex four-year gang case, which originally involved dozens of notorious San Francisco Mission District M-13 gang members and began as a death penalty case, "the hardest thing I ever had to do professionally, without any doubt."
John Philipsborn, one of the lead attorneys in the case, conceded there was ample tension in the trial. But he praises Alsup.
"He can be a tough taskmaster if you're interfering with his schedule," Philipsborn said. "That said, I think at times he takes a unique perspective of litigation that is useful. He has ... a view of how things should be done."
No one doubts Alsup's blue-chip legal credentials. He graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and worked in the U.S. Solicitor General's Office during the Carter administration. He wound up at powerhouse Bay Area law firm Morrison & Foerster before he was tapped for the judgeship.
On the bench, Alsup has had blockbuster cases. He upheld Oakland's ban on liquor billboards in residential areas, tossed out a major patent suit Genentech brought against Amgen, sided with the Bush administration during a testy 2002 West Coast port lockout and blocked the federal government from revoking doctors' licenses for prescribing medical pot.
Alsup has had his share of reversals, but he said that comes with the territory.
"It does not bug me to get reversed in a close call," he said. "I do feel there are occasions where the good reasons that supported my decision got swept under the rug."
He will have ample opportunity to make crucial calls in the Google-Oracle trial. Lawyers who've been before him say he's the right umpire.
"(He) is careful and conscientious," said K.A.D. Camara, who represented a tech company in a patent feud with Apple. "He has, of course, presided over many technology cases. It's good for the law that the (Oracle) case was assigned to him."
Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz.
William Alsup
U.S. district judge, Northern District of California
Born: June 27, 1945, in Jackson, Miss.
Experience: Law clerk, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 1971-72; lawyer, San Francisco law firm Morrison & Foerster, 1972-78, 1980-1998; assistant U.S. solicitor general, 1978-80
Education: Bachelor's degree, Mississippi State; law degree, Harvard
Noteworthy cases: Prosecutions of San Francisco's M-13 Gang and Down Below Gang; Apple v. Psystar patent case; contempt case against journalist Josh Wolf; challenge to federal policy stripping licenses from doctors who prescribe medical marijuana.
Personal: Married, two children, lives in Oakland. Arrives at work between 5 and 5:30 a.m. Expert in mountaineering and large-format photography.
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