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Sean Callagy
Partner
Arnold & Porter
Sean Callagy is a partner at Arnold & Porter, with a wide range of experience in commercial litigation matters in federal and state courts, including claims under trade secret law, contract and business tort laws, the Lanham Act, and federal patent and copyright laws. Sean has also litigated matters arising under the Sherman Antitrust Act and state unfair trade practice statutes.
Mr. Callagy has a wide range of experience in commercial litigation matters. He has litigated widely in federal and state courts, including claims under trade secret law, contract and business tort laws, the Lanham Act, and federal patent and copyright laws. He has also litigated matters arising under the Sherman Antitrust Act and state unfair trade practice statutes. Mr. Callagy has represented clients at all stages, from administrative agencies to federal and state trial proceedings, from preliminary remedies to post-trial motions, as well as in courts of appeal and the US Supreme Court. Mr. Callagy also has significant courtroom experience. This includes acting as second-chair in a three-week federal copyright jury trial, and also having served as a volunteer Assistant District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco during spring of 2015, in which Mr. Callagy tried three cases to jury verdict and handled numerous other courtroom proceedings.
Mr. Callagy also has provided counseling to clients concerning general copyright, trademark, and patent advice, as well as antitrust implications from the formation of patent pools and merger clearance by antitrust enforcement agencies.
While in law school, Mr. Callagy served as an extern to the Honorable Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Business Law Journal and was a member of the Board of Advocates.
Prior to law school, Mr. Callagy was a Fulbright Fellow in Hamburg, Germany, where he taught at the Emilie-Wüstenfeld-Gymnasium and attended the University of Hamburg. Mr. Callagy is fluent in German.
Recent Articles by Sean Callagy
In a recently filed suit involving the popular videogame Fortnite, the Central District of California faces an important question regarding copyright law: does a copyright in a registered choreographic work extend protection to a smaller portion of the work when that portion is copied by a third party and implemented as a dance move in a video game? Owned and developed by Epic Games, Inc. (“Epic”), Fortnite is a “battle royale” style videogame where players fight to be the last person standing. Fortnite players can purchase “emotes,” which are dance moves or other gestures performed by their avatar. Plaintiff Kyle Hanagami owns a copyright registration for a choreographic work called “How Long Choreography.” Hanagami alleges that an emote called “It’s Complicated” copies “the heart” of his work, as it is the only section of the How Long Choreography that occurs ten times throughout the original.