California Lawyer of the Year Joins IP Justice Board Allonn Levy Brings Cyber-Litigation Experience to New Civil Liberties Group

Silicon Valley attorney Allonn E. Levy has joined the Board of Directors of IP Justice, a new international civil liberties group that works for balanced intellectual property law.  Levy, a litigator in the San Jose law firm of Hopkins & Carley, was recently named by the California Lawyer magazine as “California Attorney of the Year” for his work on precedent-setting Internet legal cases.

“Its an incredible honor to join the IP Justice board and further assist in the development of this organization’s mission.  IP Justice’s focus of balancing both creator’s rights and consumer’s rights in the international arena fills a dramatic void in the current landscape of intellectual property policy and civil rights groups,” Levy said.

Levy has a distinguished track record of defending the constitutional rights of both citizens and creators in cyberspace.  For several years, Levy represented open source software developer Mathew Pavlovich in his effort to build a competing DVD player for the Linux Operating System.  Earlier this year, Levy, along with his co-counsel and sister Ornah Levy, won a landmark cyber-law decision before the California Supreme Court in Pavlovich v. Superior Court.   The 3-year pro-bono court battle concluded when the brother and sister team defeated the Hollywood movie studios’ effort to re-argue the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“The addition of Allonn Levy to the IP Justice Board of Directors is an exciting development for this new organization.  After years of defending civil liberties in the litigation trenches, Levy's valuable insight and experience will complement our work of protecting consumer rights to use digital media,” said IP Justice Executive Director Robin Gross.

In 1999, while staff attorney for intellectual property with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Gross recruited Levy as the first attorney to join the defense teams of the New York and California DeCSS cases.  As part of the EFF legal team, Levy and Gross defended 2600 Magazine in a challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 2000 and later won an important victory in the California Court of Appeals for web publishers of DeCSS computer code in 2001.

Levy is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court as well as the state and federal courts throughout California.  In addition to lecturing as a guest speaker at various universities and symposiums, Levy regularly comments on cyber-law issues in national and international publications.  Before joining the law firm of Hopkins & Carley in 2002, Levy was a litigator with the HS Law Group in San Jose.  Levy is a graduate of Santa Clara University School of Law and holds a bachelors degree from California State University at Northridge with studies emphasizing business and international relations.