Anne M. Cappella

Cappella heads Weil Gotshal's strategic IP counseling group. Her multidisciplinary reach includes leading global patent litigation and advising on large deals. A former IBM engineer, her clients include Apple Inc., Intel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc.

She is currently litigating cases in Texas and Minnesota. As co-counsel representing intervenor Intel in a pending multi-patent case, Cappella is fending off claims that products developed by Intel, Broadcom Ltd., Qlogic Corp., Mellanox Technologies, Emulex Corp. and others infringe eight patents directed to intelligent network interface adapters used for ethernet communications. The plaintiff is a former high-end ethernet server adapter maker. Alacritech Inc. v. Dell Inc., 2:16-cv-00695 (E.D. Texas, filed June 30, 2016).

When the University of Minnesota sued T-Mobile and three other wireless service providers, Cappella was tapped to be co-lead counsel. The asserted patents are directed to 4G LTE cellular communications and they name as inventor, among others, Georgios Giannakis, director of the university's Digital Technology Center.

"This case comes at the tail end of the smartphone wars," Cappella said.

She said the claim is based on the inventors or patent prosecutors withholding information from the patent office while the office was deciding whether to grant the patents now being asserted. Regents of the University of Minnesota v. T-Mobile USA Inc., 0:14-cv-04671 (D. Minn., filed Nov. 5, 2014).

Cappella holds an electrical engineering degree and worked for IBM for four years before law school. "I've evolved from making the chips to now litigating over the phones themselves," she said.

— John Roemer