Christopher W. Kennerly

Kennerly has something that not every attorney in the intellectual property arena possesses: a formal education in engineering.

The Paul Hastings partner has a master’s degree in electrical engineering with concentrations in digital signal processing and wireless communication systems.

Although he has never worked as an engineer, Kennerly said he has a good technical understanding of most issues he handles, and a level of familiarity with the technology he’s litigating that is comforting to clients and distressing to opposing counsel and expert witnesses in court.

“How it’s benefited me most is being able to, on the fly, carry a conversation deeply into an area when the opportunity arises,” he said. “Not being wedded to an outline or particular questions written in advance but just having a conversation and knowing what the issues are.”

Kennerly does a lot of defense work for AT&T Corp. because its legal issues often deal with telecommunications, his area of specialty. The company also likes his inclination to mount an aggressive defense from the outset to “hold the plaintiff’s feet to the fire,” he added.

He successfully defended the company against a patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation lawsuit by Network Apps LLC concerning technology allowing a cellphone to be paired with a secondary device. Network Apps LLC v. AT&T Inc. et al., 16-CV01852 (W.D. Wash., filed Dec. 3, 2016).

Kennerly’s team filed a motion to dismiss the case for the plaintiff’s failure to adequately plead each count. Instead of opposing the motion, Network Apps dismissed its case, potentially worth $107 million in compensatory damages, in April 2017.

In a higher profile case brought by Keith Raniere against AT&T, in which the plaintiff claimed he invented teleconferencing in 1995, Kennerly won a dismissal with prejudice for lack of standing in addition to nearly $1 million in attorney fees. Raniere v. AT&T Corp., 15-CV02298 (N.D. Tex., filed July 10, 2015).

After Raniere failed to come up with the documents proving ownership of the five patents he claimed AT&T infringed, Kennerly started to unravel the plaintiff’s corporate documents. This culminated in him cross-examining Raniere, which led to the plaintiff’s admission that he intentionally falsified a statement his counsel was relying on for standing.

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit panel affirmed the decision and denied Raniere’s petition for en banc review last year.

“The point is, when you see viable defenses sitting on your hand, letting the case play out isn’t the best strategy,” Kennerly said. “In my experience, you have to attack hard and early on in the case.”

— Winston Cho