Pieter de Ganon

Pieter is counsel in Freshfields’ international arbitration group, based in Silicon Valley and Tokyo. He advises multinational corporations and sovereign states in international arbitration, cross-border litigation, and internal investigations.

Pieter focuses on multi-jurisdictional IP and technology disputes at the frontier of innovation, across fields such as artificial intelligence, biologics, agricultural biotechnology, next-generation energy storage, advanced materials, and semiconductor fabrication. His experience includes representing Toshiba in a series of ICC arbitrations arising from the US$18 billion divestiture of its memory chip business, acting for the claimant in a landmark arbitration over antibody-drug conjugates, and defending a major AI company in one of the first copyright infringement cases targeting model training. He has also advised the Republic of Türkiye and the Republic of Bulgaria in ICSID proceedings involving energy-sector investments, and has handled commercial arbitrations under the AAA, ICC, ICDR, JAMS, JCAA, and SCC rules.

Pieter clerked for Judge John Noonan, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Leonard Sand, US District Court for the Southern District of New York. He previously taught IP law at Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of Law in Tokyo and economic history at Kyoto University.

He is fluent in English and Japanese, and reads Dutch, Italian, and Spanish.