Lucy H Koh

Early life and education

Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Norman, Oklahoma, Koh graduated from Norman High School in 1986. She was an officer of her high school's chapter of the National Honor Society. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in Social Studies in 1990 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1993.

Professional career

From 1993 until 1994, Koh worked for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow. From 1994 until 1997, Koh worked for the United States Department of Justice, first as a Special Counsel in the Office of Legislative Affairs (1994–1996) and then as a Special Assistant to the United States Deputy Attorney General (1996–1997). From 1997 until 2000, Koh served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. From 2000 until 2002, she worked as a Senior Associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, California law firm. From 2002 until 2008, Koh worked as a litigation partner at the Silicon Valley office of the law firm McDermott Will & Emery representing technology companies in patent, trade secret and commercial civil matters. In January 2008, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Koh a judge on the Superior Court of California for Santa Clara County, a position she held until becoming a U.S. district judge in 2010.

Federal judicial service

On January 20, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Koh on the recommendation of California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California vacated by judge Ronald M. Whyte, who assumed senior status in 2009. On March 4, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to move her nomination to the full Senate. The Senate confirmed Koh in a 90–0 vote on June 7, 2010. She received her commission on June 9, 2010.

On February 25, 2016, President Obama nominated Koh to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Harry Pregerson, who took senior status on December 11, 2015. On July 13, 2016 a hearing on her nomination was held before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. On September 15, 2016 her nomination was reported out of committee by a vote of 13-7. Her nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the end of the 114th Congress.

Tenure as district court judge

Koh has recently overseen multidistrict litigation involving alleged privacy violations by Apple, Inc. She has also overseen multidistrict privacy litigation against Google's Gmail.

In Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., on June 26 and June 29, 2012, respectively, Koh granted Apple Inc. preliminary injunctions against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet (which she later dissolved after the case was remanded by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals) and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone (on October 11, 2012 the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals "reversed and remanded" this decision while the case is in appeal). Her comment that Apple attorneys must be "smoking crack" if they thought 75 pages of witnesses would be called in the last few hours allotted for Apple was widely reported.

In January 2014, Koh ordered seven technology companies‍—‌Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar‍—‌to face antitrust litigation for adhering to secret agreements not to hire each other's employees, the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation.

Personal life

Koh is married to California Supreme Court Justice and former Stanford law professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. They have two children.