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Alyson Tocicki is an associate in the Litigation Department and a member of the Trials Practice Group. Alyson handles high-profile and complex litigation matters around the country, with a particular emphasis on product liability, false advertising, and intellectual property disputes.

Alyson has experience representing clients at all stages of litigation, including: filing initial pleadings; coordinating discovery; briefing and arguing motions; assisting with key fact and expert witness depositions; writing jury addresses; drafting direct and cross examinations; and preparing witnesses for trial. She regularly represents Fortune 500 companies in the media and entertainment, consumer products, and pharmaceutical industries, as well as professional sports leagues and teams. Alyson leverages her experience to provide creative solutions and to manage her cases with an eye towards trial.

In addition, Alyson devotes significant time to pro bono matters, having been recognized at Proskauer’s 2023 Golden Gavel Awards for her substantial contributions to the Firm’s pro bono efforts. She also serves as a member of the Firm’s Associate Council and was selected to be a Protégée for Proskauer’s Women’s Sponsorship Program, an initiative for high-performing, mid-level lawyers that champions future leaders.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Alyson earned her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law, where she served as a Managing Editor of the UCLA Law Review and President of the Student Bar Association. While in law school, she also earned multiple Masin Family Academic Excellence Awards, advised first-year students on legal research and writing, and worked as a judicial extern for the Honorable Robert N. Kwan in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California.

Proving access to and use of trade secrets are core elements in a trade secrets misappropriation case.  Recent rulings in a trade secrets action filed by Allergan against its competitor Revance Therapeutics (“Revance”) provide helpful guidance on what is sufficient to plead these elements. There, the court explained what facts are—and are not—sufficient to infer access to and use of trade secrets allegedly misappropriated. The court also explained how examining the similarity of design may help in this analysis. Finally, the court clarified that the ability to reverse engineer alone may not always preclude trade secret protection.  

The United States Supreme Court, in Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., a recent 6-3 decision, found that innocent legal errors in copyright applications do not preclude copyright holders from taking advantage of the safe harbor provision of the Copyright Act, which protects registrants from having their copyrights invalidated due to inadvertent errors.  The Court’s ruling therefore made clear that such errors in copyright applications—including both mistakes of law and mistakes of fact—will rarely be the basis for invalidation.

The prosecution of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the infamous healthcare and life sciences company, Theranos, Inc., has sparked media attention around the country. With just a few months before trial is slated to begin, Holmes recently lost her pretrial battle over whether the attorney-client privilege precludes the introduction of certain emails with counsel.  While the emails at issue remain sealed from public view, related filings and hearings indicate Holmes and lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP (“BSF”) attempted to prevent the Wall Street Journal from exposing the startup’s impending collapse.