Peter Perkowski, Esq.

Los Angeles, CA

Peter Perkowski joined SLDN’s board in May 2012.

Peter Perkowski is a partner in the international law firm of Winston & Strawn LLP, where he concentrates his practice in intellectual property litigation, including patent, trademark, publicity rights, false advertising, copyright, entertainment, and sports matters.

Peter has represented companies in patent cases involving many technologies and industries, including life sciences, medical devices, Internet technology and interfaces, software and digital technology, and gaming machines. Peter’s non-patent IP work includes cases under the Lanham Act, disputes over rights of publicity, trademark and copyright infringement, and trade secret misappropriation. Among Peter’s significant cases are copyright disputes related to the James Bond movie franchise and the Reginald Denny beating video; trade secret disputes between competitors in the sports apparel and video-game-programming industries; and disputes involving television and film contracts. He was also a member of the Disney trial team in Katzenberg v. Disney, an infamous dispute involving the valuation of some of Disney’s best-known intellectual property.

Peter has also represented LGBT clients, including Latin American gay and transgender immigrants seeking asylum and a lesbian woman in a second-parent adoption matter.  Peter has been involved in many of the major LGBT civil rights cases in California of the past several years.  In North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group, Inc. v. Superior Court, in which plaintiff was refused reproductive health services based on the treating physicians’ religious objection to performing the procedure on a lesbian woman, Peter represented over a dozen community legal and health organizations in arguing that allowing doctors to refuse healthcare services based on a patient’s medically irrelevant (and legally protected) characteristics would foster a climate of anxiety among LGBT people, thus exacerbating disparities in access to and use of healthcare by a population that is already medically underserved.  Peter also filed amicus briefs in In re Marriage Cases, where the California Supreme Court struck down statutes restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples, and Strauss v. Horton, where the California Supreme Court upheld a challenge to Proposition 8.  In United States v. Harvey, Peter represented SLDN as amicus curiae in support of an Air Force captain who had been discharged for “conduct unbecoming” based on private, consensual sexual activity with another adult man. 

In 2010, Peter was named to the National LGBT Bar Association’s inaugural “Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40” list.

Peter received his B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester in New York, his law degree from George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., and his M.A. in Kinesiology (Sport Management) from California State University, Long Beach.  A native of New York State, Peter currently lives in Los Angeles.