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Top Apple Lawyer Sees Slight Pay Boost as Legal Docket Grows

Top Apple Lawyer Sees Slight Pay Boost as Legal Docket Grows

Apple Inc. typical counsel Katherine Adams acquired a $27.1 million pay offer through fiscal 2022, a slight enhance from the yr prior, as the corporation coped with a rising litigation docket.

Adams been given $5 million in dollars, including $1 million in income, and $22.1 million in stock awards, Apple disclosed in an once-a-year proxy filing Thursday. She been given virtually $27 million in 2021.

The concerns Apple is now wrestling with include things like lawsuits, a unionization work in outlets, a employing slowdown, and a pushback about return-to-workplace protocols.

Apple employed Adams, a former top rated attorney at Honeywell Global Inc., to be successful the retiring D. Bruce Sewell as its legislation department leader in 2017. She is perennially a single of the greatest-paid out lawful chiefs between US publicly traded organizations.

She received $26 million in payment in 2020 and $25 million in 2019.

Previous calendar year Adams oversaw a reorganization of Apple’s in-residence lawful group, in accordance to memoranda received by Bloomberg. The reshuffling created two new groups—product and regulatory, and company, industrial, and compliance—within the Cupertino, Calif.-centered company’s lawful functionality.

Apple named a new vice president of lawful very last October in Heather Grenier, a previous lover at the law agency Morrison & Foerster who just lately was a senior director at the company overseeing business litigation and lawful operations.

An Apple spokesman declined to go over staff issues.

The changes transpired after the departure in late 2021 of Apple’s former chief litigation counsel, Noreen Krall, as properly as the dying in February 2022 of Douglas Vetter, a longtime affiliate typical counsel at the company.

Krall, a co-founder of ChIPs Community Inc., a nonprofit women’s technology law team, put in a dozen years at Apple. Her former work was removed in legal’s restructuring.

Apple also noticed its previous head of company law, Gene Levoff, plead guilty last summer time to insider buying and selling costs. The enterprise was sued in December by Jayna Richardson Whitt, an intellectual house attorney who promises she was fired by Apple very last year for complaining about abuse by a male colleague.

Compliance, Privacy Variations

Apple’s company, business, and compliance group is now led by Kyle Andeer, an additional longtime in-household law firm at the organization who most just lately served as Apple’s main compliance officer and head of company legislation. Andeer’s portfolio now consists of anti-dollars laundering, competitors, and privacy.

Andeer, who joined Apple in 2010 as the company’s to start with antitrust attorney, was named vice president of merchandise and regulatory regulation in May well 2022. Apple tapped Andeer to testify at a critical US Senate antitrust hearing in 2021 about its application store policies.

Heba Hamouda, a previous director of business legislation who has labored at Apple due to the fact 2011, was promoted to be successful Andeer as the company’s compliance main.

Bruce “B.J.” Watrous Jr., yet another veteran Apple law firm and previous main business counsel and world wide head of protection at the business, is now vice president of its company, industrial, and compliance authorized team. Apple in the beginning employed Watrous in 2011 to be its top IP lawyer.

Jane Horvath, a former senior director of world wide privacy at Apple who took on the position of main privacy officer in 2021, is leaving the enterprise this thirty day period to return to non-public follow. Bloomberg first documented very last yr that Horvath would turn out to be a spouse at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which declared her seek the services of Jan. 9.

Horvath reunites with Vivek Mohan, one more former Apple privacy and cybersecurity law firm who joined Gibson Dunn very last year as co-chair of the firm’s artificial intelligence and automated programs exercise.

Gibson Dunn and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison represented Apple in a extended-functioning antitrust dispute with Epic Video games Inc. Apple prevailed in that fight even with ongoing difficulties to its application store.

Additional Authorized Promotions

Two other Apple in-property lawyers—Robert Windom and Susanne Geraghty—are now running the company’s content and products and services legislation and professional and international law teams, respectively.

Alexander Caminas was promoted in October to senior director of products and solutions law, a function that observed him take in excess of the company’s software law operate from Joyce Chow, who retired the adhering to month just after a few many years at Apple.

Colette Reiner Mayer, one more former Morrison & Foerster companion employed by Apple in late 2021 as its head of IP litigation, now stories to the company’s chief IP counsel Jeffrey Myers. Morrison & Foerster has been a popular target for Apple’s recruiters.

Heather Mewes, a previous Fenwick & West companion who has spent the previous 10 years at Apple, was elevated previous May to head of licensing and IP transactions.

Mewes took about a part vacated that identical thirty day period by previous IP transactions head Sarita Venkat, who still left Apple to come to be a deputy basic counsel for worldwide litigation at Cisco Systems Inc. Venkat is also a co-founder and co-host of the “Heels of Justice” podcast, which highlights women in the authorized occupation.

Patent and IP-similar disputes comprised approximately 40{e421c4d081ed1e1efd2d9b9e397159b409f6f1af1639f2363bfecd2822ec732a} of Apple’s caseload in US federal courts considering that 2007, according to Bloomberg Law knowledge. Apple employs a massive roster of regulation firms—from Significant Regulation giants to regional specialists—to serve its exterior counsel wants in legal battles across numerous jurisdictions.

On the lookout Ahead

An on the internet careers webpage displays that Apple is on the lookout to use for much more than a dozen positions inside of its authorized workforce. The firm has brought on a lot more than 20 lawyers from Major Law in just the earlier 12 months, according to Bloomberg Law details.

Some of people new recruits were being made to offset exits, like that of Kathryn “Katie” Tague, a a few-year veteran of Apple’s media articles and services staff.

Tague remaining the enterprise past Could to grow to be normal counsel for the XQ Institute, an Oakland, California-primarily based nonprofit backed by Laurene Powell Employment, the billionaire widow of Apple co-founder Steve Work opportunities.

A spokeswoman for XQ, which is targeted on innovation in schooling, confirmed Tague took around in Could from former in-property lawyers Edward Garey and Mark Miller.