Yar Chaikovsky

Yar Chaikovsky is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP and is based in the Firm's Silicon Valley office. He focuses his practice on intellectual property litigation.

He has extensive experience litigating matters for companies in all stages of development, from start-ups to established companies. He has litigated in technology fields as diverse as networking, software, hardware, internet, communications, video compression, semiconductors, consumer electronics, analog devices and medical devices.

He was ranked as a leading intellectual property lawyer by Chambers USA in 2009, 2010 and 2011, where he was described as a "'fast processor' and 'insightful and productive'." Chambers USA praised him for his "assertive, thorough and thoughtful approach" and his ability to adopt the viewpoint of in-house counsel. Yar Chaikovsky was also recognized in the 2011 edition of IAM Patent Litigation 250 – The World's Leading Patent Litigators and as a leading patent litigator in The Legal 500 United States. Yar was honored in the Daily Journal as one of the 75 Leading Intellectual Property Litigators in 2009, 2010 and 2011. He was previously profiled in the Daily Journal as one of the top 20 lawyers in California under the age of 40 as well as in the Silicon Valley Business Journal's 40 Under 40. Yar was Yahoo!'s first head patent counsel.

In 2008, Yar Chaikovsky was elected as a member of The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). Membership in The Fellows is limited to one-third of 1 percent of lawyers licensed to practice in each jurisdiction.

Yar graduated from the University of Southern California in 1991 with a B.S. in Computer Science, magna cum laude, and received the University's highest scholarship honor, a Trustees' Scholarship. He received his J.D. from UCLA Law School in 1994 while obtaining the Wheat Scholarship and Murray Fellowship.

Before practicing law, Yar Chaikovsky was an engineer in the missile systems defense department of Hughes Aircraft Company. He is a member of several professional organizations including the American Bar Association, American Intellectual Property Law Association, Federal Circuit Bar Association, International Trade Commission Lawyer Association, San Francisco Bay Area IP Inn of Court, American Electronics Association and American Bar Association.