Andrew P. Tower has over twenty-five years of experience as an attorney and counselor at law, primarily working on complex business and intellectual property, transactional and litigation matters in the energy industry. He was a partner at Howrey LLP, formerly one of the largest intellectual property firms in the world.
Mr. Tower represents clients over a wide range of energy industry-related commercial and intellectual property matters, including freedom to operate searches, asset management and licensing.
Mr. Tower has represented clients in industries involving a wide range of technologies, including oilfield equipment and oil country tubular goods, petrochemical processing equipment, industrial valves, telecommunications, geological software, computer systems and software, power filtration, consumer electronics, optical disk drives, transportation and textiles. He also represents clients in arbitrations and in proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Mr. Tower has successfully handled numerous complex commercial disputes, obtaining multi-million dollar awards through trials, settlements and arbitration, as well as defense against multi-million dollar claims, through jury verdict, summary judgments and indemnified settlements.
Prior to practicing law, Mr. Tower worked as a mechanical and petroleum engineer for a division of Baker Hughes.
Outside general counsel functions for several Houston-area and international energy and manufacturing clients, contractual and commercial matters.
Intellectual property applications, acquisitions, patents, trademarks, copyrights, freedom to operate studies, evaluation, and due diligence reports for corporate clients seeking to acquire or develop protection for technology or expand or divest business lines.
Non-compete and non-disclosure agreements, trade secret management matters.
Won damages on counterclaims and obtained a take-nothing judgment against plaintiff after jury trial in action seeking award of patents and damages for trade secret misappropriation and tortuous interference involving oil-field pressure relief valve technology
Obtained favorable settlement for a major oil company prior to trial in action against subsequent owners to recover expenses for clean-up costs of former Texaco refinery
Obtained favorable settlement for subcontractor in construction and products liability dispute regarding catalytic cracking unit installed in Corpus Christi refinery
Obtained favorable settlement for principals in breach of agreement to fund investment in natural gas treatment projects
Obtained summary judgment dismissing case and denial of injunction for chemical/textile manufacturer in suit alleging breach of patent license and consent decree.
Obtained summary judgment dismissing case for major automaker in patent litigation in Eastern District of Texas and Central District of California involving interactive voice response systems for customer service call centers. This case was part of the largest multi-defendant patent litigation in history
Won seven-figure jury verdict plus attorney’s fees in patent litigation involving computer hardware technology
Obtained favorable settlements for major airline, financial services company and bank in multi-district patent litigation
Obtained favorable settlement for plaintiff against former executives in actions for misappropriation of trade secrets and violation of non-compete agreements
Obtained favorable settlement for plaintiff prior to trial after defeating extensive pretrial motions in a breach of insurance contract and bad faith action. 2008 WL 905354 (S.D.Tex. 2008)
Obtained favorable settlement for plaintiff in trademark/false advertising litigation involving power filtration technology