Unrivaled 2025: James Yoon of Wilson Sonsini

You successfully represented VB Assets in a patent infringement case against Amazon. After a one-week trial in federal district court in Delaware in November 2023, the jury found that Amazon willfully infringed all four asserted VB patents and awarded VB Assets $46.7 million in damages. Can you tell us about your trial strategy?

In any trial, you want to tell a story that is going to connect with a jury. We had the makings of that in the VB Assets case. This was an underdog tale, and the heroes were easy to identify with: three brothers who wanted to build the world’s first true “Star Trek” computer, which people could interact with naturally and use to improve their lives.

They started a company called VoiceBox and had early success, including the incorporation of VoiceBox technology into Lexus cars; they were on their way to realizing their dreams. The VoiceBox company was a family whose innovations—and success—were ultimately stripped from them by a giant corporation, Amazon.

Our strategy was to ensure that we told that story to the jury and explained how the patented technology was tied to the dream. To do so, we had to keep Amazon from trivializing the company and its technology and from confusing the issues.

There were lots of technical rabbit holes that we could have gone down, and we had to explain how VB Assets was the successor to VoiceBox and that it was owned, in part, by the VoiceBox employees. We knew that if we could communicate our fundamental story to the jury, we would have a good chance.

Can you describe a major hurdle that happened during the course of VB Assets LLC v. Amazon? How did you overcome it?

The biggest hurdle we faced was the seductive narrative that Amazon presented at trial. It portrayed VoiceBox as a forgotten company that had antiquated technology, which used “rules,” while Amazon and Alexa relied on AI. Amazon made its apples-to-oranges point through slides that represented the companies’ supposedly differing technologies such as a football and soccer ball.

When we cross-examined Amazon witnesses, however, we elicited admissions that Amazon uses rules to help Alexa understand hundreds of phrases, puncturing a critical part of Amazon’s story. We turned the football/soccer ball argument against Amazon, to the point that its trial team scrubbed its remaining slides of the imagery.

There were plenty of other hurdles, including a Covid-inspired delay, the jury’s fondness toward Amazon, and proving damages on a product (the Alexa-enabled Echo) that Amazon sold at a loss. But discrediting Amazon’s “obsolete” technology versus Amazon’s AI argument was undoubtedly a key to victory.

When did you first know you wanted to be a trial lawyer? What clicked for you?

I discovered that I wanted to be a trial lawyer completely by accident. I was an electrical engineer and came to Wilson Sonsini to work with start-ups and be a venture capital lawyer. During the summer program, I met with litigators getting ready for trial and they seemed to be having so much fun! The storytelling, the graphics, and the engagement with the client was fantastic. I loved the process of trying to educate and convince a group of eight to 12 strangers to decide a case in your favor. Venture capital suddenly seemed very boring.

What are the major keys to winning over a jury or a judge?

You must respect the jury. They are taking their job seriously and they want to get to the right result. You have to show them that you believe in their ability to do that. And if you don’t respect them, you’ll lose them.

What is the best advice you give young trial lawyers?

“Be willing to leave things on the cutting room floor. The key to any trial is to pick your best argument and go with it.”