Daniel Cooperman to join Apple as General Counsel [UPDATED]

Apple today announced that Daniel Cooperman, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary at Oracle Corporation, will join Apple as the company’s senior vice president, general counsel and secretary, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Cooperman will begin at Apple on November 1. “Dan will be an excellent addition to our team and will fit right into Apple’s fast paced culture,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “Dan is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in securities compliance, intellectual property, litigation and corporate governance.”

Apple also announced that Donald J. Rosenberg, who has served as Apple’s senior vice president, general counsel and secretary, is leaving the company.

“We thank Don for his contributions to Apple during the past ten months, and wish him well in his future endeavors,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release.

At Oracle, Cooperman has been responsible for Oracle’s legal department, including worldwide legal policies, corporate governance, securities compliance, mergers and acquisitions, commercial licensing, intellectual property, employment law, litigation, patent law and legal support for Oracle’s various business units. Cooperman currently serves as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Software & Information Industry Association, the largest trade association in the software industry. He is a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee of Corporate General Counsel and is on the Advisory Council for the Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School.

Prior to joining Oracle, he was a partner with the San Francisco-based law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen (now known as Bingham McCutchen), and served as chair of the firm’s 65-lawyer Business & Transactions Group and managing partner of the San Jose office.

Cooperman graduated summa cum laude with highest distinction in economics from Dartmouth College in 1972, then attended Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and School of Law, receiving both his M.B.A. and J.D. from Stanford in 1976.

Kevin Kingsbury reports for The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Rosenberg is leaving Apple to take over as general counsel at Qualcomm Inc. Qualcomm’s previous general counsel, Lou Lupin, resigned from his role in mid-August after the wireless technology company suffered a string of legal setbacks.”

Kingsbury reports, “The post at Apple had been vacant for six months ahead of Mr. Rosenberg’s hiring. Apple’s former general counsel, Nancy Heinen, has since been accused of helping to manipulate one of her own stock-option awards and a grant to Chief Executive Steve Jobs, and falsifying company records to conceal the alleged fraud.”

Full article here.

[UPDATED: 10:15am EDT: Added WSJ info and link.]

9 Comments

  1. Is it possible that he was employed simply because Apple’s management wanted the opportunity to say “this sounds like a job for Cooperman”.

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    My magic word is “building”: as in, “able to leap tall buildings with a single bound”.

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