Women in Law & IP 2022

Duo is currently Vice President, Chief IP Counsel of IP at Box, Inc., where she manages Box’ patent and trademark portfolios as well as a variety of IP licensing issues.   She started her IP career as a patent examiner at the USPTO; was a patent litigator with Orrick Herrington & Sutcliff and Latham & Watkins; and was Managing Counsel at Oracle & IP Counsel at SAP AG, where she dealt with a variety of patent, trademark, copyright, standards, licensing, and anti-trust related issues, including building the patent program for SAP Labs in China.

Duo received her Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Maryland, Master of Telecommunications and Computers from the George Washington University, and J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.  

Caity Ross received her JD from Harvard Law School and her BA from Colorado College in Biochemistry & Classics-History-Politics. After working for the start-up Gamblit Gaming, Caity joined SharkNinja in 2019 as a Senior Patent Counsel.  She has focused on international patent portfolio management for the Shark brand, now holding the Associate General Counsel, Global IP & Robotics position at SharkNinja.

Charles Blackburn is currently an Assistant General Counsel for Microsoft Corporation, being based in Redmond, WA, where he leads legal support of certain of the company’s consulting & delivery services, engineering teams and its Commercial IP practice.  Prior to Microsoft, Charles led legal support of various sales, services, marketing and product functions for multiple semiconductor and software companies, being based, respectively, in Cambridge & Waltham, MA, New York, NY and Singapore.  Charles is a graduate of Emory University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Erin Wong is Senior Corporate Counsel, Intellectual Property at Autodesk. Erin drives Autodesk innovation strategy and protection, counseling in the use of intellectual property to further business objectives, and specializes within the areas of patent, trade secret, confidentiality, and open source. She has held positions on corporate and law firm diversity, equity, and inclusion committees for over a decade. Erin received her J.D. from Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and her B.S. in Biology with dual minors in Humanities and Law and Society from the University of California, San Diego.

Anne M. Cappella is a partner in Weil’s Silicon Valley office, where she focuses on patent counseling and litigation involving complex and cutting-edge technologies.

Ms. Cappella has a uniquely diverse intellectual property counseling practice, which includes advising clients on pre-litigation patent strategies, technical aspects of patent licensing arrangements, patent acquisitions, and intellectual property due diligence for M&A transactions.

Clients also call on Ms. Cappella to oversee and lead the most technical aspects of patent litigations, including performing technical analysis to ensure solid claim construction, infringement, and validity arguments; overseeing technical experts and interacting with company engineers; and managing post-grant strategy and proceedings. Ms. Cappella has extensive experience representing clients in high-stakes multi-patent and multi-district litigations, as well as trade secret actions. She litigates in federal courts and arbitration proceedings, and has particularly deep experience before the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Ms. Cappella uses her strong technical background, including a B.S. in electrical engineering with minors in computer science and mathematics and prior work experience as an engineer and consultant for IBM, to advise clients on a diverse range of technology. She has represented smartphone manufacturers and wireless carriers in proceedings involving data encoding, memory, multi-touch, WiFi, GPS, data synchronization, 3G/LTE cellular data modulation, and digital camera technologies. She also has represented other technology-focused clients in proceedings involving wireless, integrated circuit design, memory, Ethernet and DSL technology, and semiconductor processing and packaging. Some of Ms. Cappella’s representative clients include leading smartphone manufacturers, Microsoft, Intel, Amkor, and T-Mobile, among others.

Ms. Cappella is widely regarded as a leader in the field. In 2014 and 2017, Ms. Cappella was named to the Daily Journal’s list of the Top Women Lawyers in California. The publication, which recognizes the 100 most accomplished women lawyers in the state, noted that “Cappella uses her background as an electrical engineer and a love for complicated technology to help her clients fend off patent infringement claims.” Since 2016 Ms. Cappella has been recognized as a recommended lawyer for patent litigation by Legal 500. She also has been included in The Recorder’s list of the top Women Leaders in Law and was named a “2016 Women of Influence” by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Ms. Cappella is actively involved in a number of initiatives aimed at bettering the careers of women lawyers. She is a member of the Firm’s global Women@Weil leadership board, a Firm affinity group that focuses on supporting women lawyers. Ms. Cappella also is a formal mentor to several senior women associates, and a regular participant in women law student and engineer mentoring programs.

Michele Simkin is a partner and intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, where she is currently a member of the firm’s national Management Committee and co-chair of the Pharmaceuticals & Regulated Drugs Area of Focus within Foley’s Health Care & Life Sciences Sector. Additionally, she previously served as chair of the firm’s Intellectual Property Department, overseeing a team of more than 300 IP professionals.

Michele provides strategic business counseling to a diverse range of life sciences and university clients relating to all aspects of intellectual property, including patent procurement and portfolio management, licensing agreements, due diligence related to IP acquisitions or sales and validity, non-infringement and freedom-to-operate analyses. Her technical experience encompasses drug delivery systems, pharmaceuticals, biologics, virology, immunology, genetics, and small molecules.

Michele received her law degree from The George Washington University National Law Center and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She began her career in IP as a patent examiner in the biotechnology group of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Sarah Schaedler is a Partner in Orrick’s San Francisco office and serves as co-chair of the Intellectual Property, Licensing & Technology Transactions Group. Her practice focuses on structuring and negotiating the intellectual property aspects of complex corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions and commercial transactions where software and technology are the principal assets. She advises private equity funds and strategic buyers on investments involving companies that are driven by technology & innovation, as well as IP reliant consumer product companies that are stepping into digitalization. Educated and trained in Germany, France and the U.S., Sarah also leverages her international experience in cross-border transactions and international matters.

Helen M. Schweitz is a partner at Benesch. She focuses her practice on technology transactions, licensing, online contracting, and data privacy and security. She drafts and negotiates business-critical intellectual property (IP) and information technology (IT) agreements, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), IT services, data licensing, content licensing, maintenance and support, reseller, development, collaboration, and data protection agreements.

Earlier in her legal career, Helen practiced law in-house at a Fortune 100 insurance company for three years. Helen also lived in Japan for a number of years and is conversational in Japanese.

Jennifer T. Criss is Of Counsel in Orrick’s Intellectual Property Licensing and Technology Transactions group. Her practice focuses on negotiating the intellectual property and information technology aspects of complex commercial transactions, from mergers and acquisitions to financing transactions to corporate divestitures and spin-offs. Jennifer routinely drafts, negotiates, and advises clients on a wide variety of software and IP licenses, software as a service (SaaS) and cloud services agreements, software development agreements, joint development agreements, software and hardware contracts, and related consulting agreements. Before her legal career, Jennifer taught art history at The George Washington University and American University.

Jeannine Sano has nearly thirty years of experience trying cases in patent venues across the country in various technology fields, including mobile communications, video processing, graphics, operating systems, CPUs, chipsets, memory, LCD manufacturing, and medical devices.

She has tried cases in Texas, Illinois, Florida, and California, as well as  handling hearings at the ITC (including virtually during the pandemic), at the PTAB in IPRs and CBMs, and appeals before the Federal Circuit. In addition to her jury and bench trial experience, Ms. Sano presented an issue of first impression on the Uniform Trade Secrets Act before the California Court of Appeal, resulting in affirmance and award of attorneys’ fees.

Ms. Sano previously served in the ABA IP Law Section Leadership as Chair of the Patent Litigation Committee and Chair of the ITC Committee and was selected as an Early Neutral Evaluator for the Northern District of California. She has also been a guest instructor for Notre Dame Law School’s trial advocacy program and a judge for the mock trial and patent law programs at Stanford Law School.

Patricia Young represents market-leading companies in intellectual property litigation, particularly high-stakes, complex, multi-patent, and multi-jurisdictional cases.
Ms. Young is a first-chair trial lawyer who litigates patent and trade secrets cases for a broad spectrum of companies, both as defendants and plaintiffs. She regularly tries cases across the country, including in state and federal courts, and before the International Trade Commission (ITC).
She deftly synthesizes technical, economic, and legal perspectives to develop unique, winning litigation strategies. As an incisive and trusted advisor for patent and trade secret matters, she is also well-positioned to counsel clients on intellectual property issues in corporate matters.
Ms. Young has developed an impressive record of leading and managing complex, multi-product, multi-claim disputes. Her experience spans industries from LiDAR, semiconductors, RF technology, memory, microprocessors, Wi-Fi routers and mesh network devices, file system and storage software and hardware, networking, gaming, e-commerce, telecommunications, UV LEDs, biotech, biologics, protein engineering, sequencing technology, microcoils, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals to consumer products.
Ms. Young was named one of the “Women Worth Watching in STEM” by Diversity Journal in 2021. She is also a collaborator on the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide, the Federal Judicial Center’s definitive patent litigation how-to guide for federal judges, now in its third edition.
Her pro bono work addresses Social Security disability, domestic violence, veteran disability benefits, housing, and §1983 civil rights actions. She served on the firm’s Pro Bono Committee and received the California State Bar Wiley M. Manuel Award for pro bono service in 2013.

Dr. Erica Pascal is the founder of Ingensity IP, an intellectual property strategic counseling firm.  Her practice is focused on startup companies in the areas of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, food tech, and synthetic biology. Prior to the creation of Ingensity IP, Dr. Pascal was a partner at a major global law firm.

Dr. Pascal began her career in science studying the control of gene expression.  She received a B.S. degree in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California at Berkeley where she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Tjian.  Dr. Pascal did her post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois. She then worked for 8 years in research and management in the biotech industry before moving into law.

Intellectual property attorney, professor of law, former Naval Officer and mechanical engineer Maria Stout advises on strategic planning and management of IP assets, particularly patents, including licensing and offensive and defensive tactics designed to safeguard and monetize valuable innovation. Maria’s clients range from small, fast-growth companies to international corporations with billions of dollars of market share and extensive IP portfolios.

A veteran of the U.S. Navy, Maria’s years as a surface warfare officer gave her specialized training and hands-on experience working with teams as both a leader and service provider to get the mission accomplished. Patient, loyal and personally accountable, Maria’s ability to remain calm in stressful situations, unwavering focus, discipline and fearless approach to problem-solving allow her to motivate individuals and groups at all levels and with varied perspectives to realize their full potential and accomplish their goals.

An important focus of Maria’s practice is advising major national and international corporations. A team builder and creative problem solver, Maria manages the extensive IP portfolios of her clients with an eye to providing value. She understands the pressures in-house executives face, and works diligently to conserve their resources and legal spend while delivering the superior counsel, extraordinary work product and immediate service they require.

Maria protects valuable innovation in the maritime, aeronautical, and automative industries. Maria is fluent in myriad technologies such as molecular diagnostic and microbiology testing platforms, including lab automation, liquid handling, sample processing and optical detection systems, as well as microfluidic chip technologies, including isolating cells for genetic analysis and diagnostic assays. Maria has first-hand experience in lateral flow assays and detection systems, health IT and cloud-based connectivity. She is well-versed in hardware and software for optical detection systems, including spectral imaging and fluorescence detection. An All-American intercollegiate sailor with decades of maritime experience, Maria has a first-hand understanding of all aspects of ship design, navigation systems, and deck equipment used in small boat, crane, flight deck, and well deck operations.

Fluent in Spanish, dynamic and well-connected, Maria has been named multiple times as a San Diego “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers magazine for her work in intellectual property law. Maria is an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law where she teaches patent law.

Abbey Ibrahim is an Intellectual Property Legal Counsel at Adobe, Inc. With more than 23 years of professional work experience within Fortune 100 companies and private law firm, Abbey possesses a unique set of technical, legal, as well as leadership skills that enables her to build the vital trust and confidence of her clients. In her current role at Adobe, Abbey serves as a patent portfolio manager for numerous products and research units at Adobe, litigation support, as well as a client counselor for various IP subject matters within the company.

Before her legal career, Abbey worked as a technical leader and Software architect in the technology industry for such companies as Intel Inc. and Varity Co., leading the development and deployment of various software programs at the respective companies. Notably, she earned the prestigious Department Recognition Award for her dedication and achievement and was recognized for outstanding technical leadership to local and remote team members and for achieving strategic and tactical goals for the programs she managed.

Abbey is an enthusiast about the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts and has been an active member of DEI committees at each of her diverse workplaces. Abbey is also a promoter of diversity and gender equality efforts within Adobe and the broader community.

Abbey received her law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law and her Engineering degree from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. In her local community, Abbey serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the San Jose/Silicon Valley region of Juma; a nonprofit social enterprise that operates businesses for employing low-income transition-aged youth.

Gail Su is senior counsel on the patent transactions team at Google, where she supports all forms of patent-related and IP-related transactions, including inbound and outbound licensing, SEP licensing, complex technology transactions, and M&A. Ms Su is also a Co-founder of the Advancing Diversity Across Patent Teams initiative or ADAPT. She is passionate about supporting the next generation of IP professionals and giving every person the opportunity to be that next generation. Ms Su has a BS and BA from The University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering and Plan II Honors Programme, and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Chao “Wendy” Wang has extensive experience in technical litigation matters and represents clients in patent, trademark, trade secret, and copyright cases. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Wendy regularly represents Chinese and Taiwanese technology companies on a wide range of matters involving intellectual property disputes, commercial disputes, and government investigations. She works with companies in a variety of industries, including video streaming and entertainment, semiconductors, LED lighting, telecommunications, chemistry and chemical engineering, interactive entertainment and gaming, and medical devices.

An experienced, U.S.-trained litigator with a mainland China background, Wendy’s combination of skills add exceptional value to her client relationships. Wendy’s recent cases have included successful representation of the world’s leading video streaming platform in infringement claims relating to reality shows in China, representation of a leading Taiwanese semiconductor company in patent infringement claims, and representation of China’s leading telecommunication company in regulatory compliance matters.

Wendy earned a bachelor’s degree from Peking University and a master’s degree of chemistry from the University of Illinois. She graduated magna cum laude from the Northwestern Pritzkar School of Law. After law school she clerked for Judge Ronald Gould of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Melissa is currently Senior Director, Head of Litigation at Niantic, Inc., a AR platform and mobile AR gaming company, where she leads the team responsible for global litigation, enforcement and regulatory matters, including global patent matters in the augmented reality software space, consumer tech class actions, and global app store competition matters and investigations.  Prior to joining Niantic, Melissa scaled and led global litigation and IP functions at enterprise software company ServiceNow, Inc., where she advised on complex commercial and IP litigation as well as strategic IP portfolio growth.  Melissa began her career as a litigation associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and is a graduate of Duke Law School and Northwestern University.

Deanna Kwong is a Director in the Office of Operations, Legal, and Administrative Affairs (“OLAA”) at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.  She has almost twenty years of experience advising clients on and litigating intellectual property issues.  In 2019, The Recorder recognized Deanna as a Women Leader in Tech Law, as part of the California Leaders in Tech Law and Innovation Awards.  In 2022, the Silicon Valley Business Journal named Deanna a “Woman of Influence” in Silicon Valley.

Judy Hom is a Deputy General Counsel for StubHub and its Head of Litigation. At StubHub, Judy handles and manages all domestic and foreign litigation matters for both StubHub and viagogo (StubHub and viagogo merged in September of 2021). She also manages StubHub’s patent portfolio.  Prior to StubHub, Judy was the Associate General Counsel, Head of Litigation at Poly (merger of Plantronics and Polycom) and was a Director of Litigation at BlackBerry.  Prior to her in-house career, Judy was in private practice as a patent litigator for over 15 years.  Judy earned her law degree at the University of San Francisco and her Bachelors and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Christa Anderson handles complex and high-stakes business litigation for some of the country’s top corporations, including Google, SanDisk, Broadcom, American Honda, and Sutter Health. She has extensive experience in the areas of intellectual property (patent, copyright and trademark), breach of contract, antitrust, business torts and class actions.

Ms. Anderson has litigated, mediated and tried cases in federal courts around the country (including California, Texas, and Virginia), as well as in California state court.

Hannah Lee litigates high-stakes patent disputes for clients in the biotech, medical device, pharma and computer technologies sectors. Hannah has represented her clients as plaintiffs and defendants in all stages of litigation, including conducting direct examination and cross-examination of fact and expert witnesses, in both jury and bench trials. She practices in federal district courts throughout the country, before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Among her most notable work, Hannah successfully managed a patent litigation for a computer network security company that resulted in a judgment of over $2 billion in damages after a six-week bench trial. She also managed a patent litigation for a pharmaceutical client and obtained a $62 million settlement against Purdue Pharma LP in a patent litigation involving OxyContin.

In 2021, Hannah was recognized by Law360 as a Rising Star in intellectual property, and was named to Benchmark Litigation’s 40 and Under list in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The Daily Journal named Hannah to its 2021 Top 40 Under 40 list. Hannah is a managing editor of Kramer Levin’s Bio Law Blog and is a member of the firm’s Women’s Committee, Diversity Committee and Attorneys of Color Affinity Group.

Parijat is Associate General Counsel, Product Legal at Meta where she leads a legal team that counsels a diverse portfolio of clients, including Meta Connectivity, whose mission is to solve some of the world’s biggest internet connectivity challenges, and Social Impact, which builds products to drive meaningful, positive change on key social issues. She has advised the product teams who helped register 4.4 million voters in the US 2020 election, connect over 2 billion people to authoritative COVID-19 information, and helped communities fundraise over $5 billion for nonprofits and personal causes across Facebook and Instagram.

Prior to her work at Meta, Parijat was an early in-house attorney at enterprise data analytics Saas company, Palantir Technologies, where she built and scaled the legal department over her 8-year tenure. She started her career as an associate in the Corporate and IP Transactional Groups at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. 

She is a graduate of Michigan Law School and Cornell University.

A registered patent attorney and former senior patent examiner, Angel approaches prosecution with a personal, creative, and effective approach that is informed by extensive experience in the arts. Known for a competitively high allowance rate, she strongly advocates for in-person/WebEx interviewing, and data-driven analytics to determine the best options available. Clients across technology industries have benefitted from Angel’s experience from within and outside the USPTO. She helps clients by creatively navigating current prosecution hurdles, developing and managing patent portfolios that limit future prosecution hurdles, and analyzing existing patent families to determine best strategies based on the value and strength of pending and acquired claim sets.

Angel is a strong supporter and mentor to women in technology. Prior to Polsinelli, she was at an international intellectual property law firm where she was the first female full‚Äëequity partner in the history of the Electronics Software prosecution group. She is an avid technologist, and specializes in the areas of artificial intelligence, networking, graphics, image processing, virtual reality, augmented reality, game systems, machine learning, virtual machines, business analytics, fintech, communications, audio engineering, video engineering, forecasting, cryptography, data science, data analytics, and data security.

The daughter of a college math professor, teaching is especially important to Angel: she has developed and implemented several patent prosecution boot camps both internally at her firm and externally through different organizational groups. Angel has been a frequent faculty member and panelist on a variety of IP-related topics, for groups including PLI, ABA, AIPLA, ICLE, SWCC, the Rocky Mountain IP Institute, and the Polsinelli Business Law Institute. 

Angel’s strategic outside-of-box big picture way of thinking is enhanced by a broad and novel background of both math and music: in addition to her law and engineering diplomas, she has multiple degrees in music composition, including a degree from the prestigious Eastman School of Music. When she is not practicing, teaching, or on a panel, Angel can usually be found playing piano or composing music. A highlight each year for Angel is her participation as co‚Äëmusical director and accompanist for the San Francisco Bay Area Intellectual Property American Inn of Court musical revue in June.

Jennifer Daehler Jones is Director & Senior Intellectual Property Counsel at Autodesk, Inc.  Jennifer has lead Autodesk’s patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret programs and strategy since 2006.  Jennifer and her team provide counsel and support on intellectual property and confidentiality matters generally as well as on research collaborations with academia, government and private sector,  open source software consumption and contribution, participation in consortia and standards-setting bodies, and IP risk management.  Prior to her time at Autodesk, Jennifer worked at Silicon Graphics, Inc. and the law firms of Gray Carey Ware & Friedenrich and Coudert Brothers.  

Technology innovators call on Marina for assistance in building and managing their patent portfolios, from identifying technical advantages to implementing programs that capture these advantages as patents. 

She provides a broad spectrum of patent-related services, including the preparation and prosecution of patent applications (both U.S. and international), invention mining, patent validity and infringement analysis and opinions, freedom to operate analysis, IP due diligence work, IP licensing, and strategic IP counseling. 

Marina’s technical background in engineering and computer science and industry experience as a software developer, helps her clients take full advantage of the opportunities in this quickly evolving market.