Ask Andrew Bridges about government efforts to crack down on websites that post copyrighted material or to enlist Internet companies as copyright enforcers, and you may see his militant side. The Fenwick & West litigator is no fan of measures that restrict online expression in the name of intellectual property protection. And lately he’s been winning those battles. After a Ninth Circuit panel ordered YouTube to take down an anti-Islamic video clip, Bridges fought the decision for clients including eBay Inc., Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Yahoo Inc. The ruling was reversed en banc last month. And Bridges recently won a longstanding fight against litigious adult website Perfect 10. His team secured $5.6 million in attorney fees and costs after defeating a copyright infringement case against Giganews and Livewire.
What keeps you up at night? There’s the terror part and the enthusiasm part. I’ll start with the enthusiasm part. I absolutely love my client base. These people are working very, very hard to come up with exciting new products and services for the public and they inspire me. I feel like I get to represent the public interest in a commercial setting because I am representing those people who are trying to empower the public and deliver products and technologies and services and solutions that the public finds attractive … The terror is that I have seen how powerful the forces are that try to thwart innovation and try to control the public by limiting the public’s access to exciting technologies and services. I have seen enough glimpses of the government’s efforts to clamp down on technologies and the government’s violations of the rule of law to make me believe that, very seriously, our American constitutional system and the rule of law in the United States are indeed under threat. Part of my job as a lawyer is to stand up for the rule of law and to hold accountable those who would wield the awesome power that they have against innovation and against progress and against the public.
