Kalpana Srinivasan

Susman Godfrey LLP

Los Angeles

Intellectual proprety litigation, antitrust, class action

Srinivasan is a partner in Susman Godfrey's Los Angeles office and a member of the firm's executive committee. She has secured significant wins for her clients in patent, trade secret, copyright and class action disputes.

She's currently preparing for June trials in federal court in Texas in which her client, intellectual property licensing company Sol IP LLC, claims that an array of defendant telecom companies infringed its key standard essential LTE and WiFi patents relating to core wireless communications technologies. Sol IP v. AT&T, 2:18-cv-00526 (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 3, 2018)

"We got a favorable Markman result," she said of the outcome of the claims construction hearing held in December 2019. "In court we have an absolutely great story to tell." The patents at issue are for inventions by South Korean researchers at that country's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. "These are critical telecom patents for inventions by terrific engineers who solved problems others couldn't solve. The defendants benefit tremendously by being able to use these advanced products, but they are using them without licenses."

She said a "significant" non-public damages claim is at stake. "If you step over the line into someone's patent, you are infringing," she said. "We have brought a lot of claims." To make the facts digestible for jurors there will be three trials, one relating to WiFi claims and two to LTE claims, she said.

Meanwhile, Srinivasan awaits the outcome at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of Qualcomm Inc.'s effort to reverse class certification in a case over Qualcomm's so-called "no license, no chips" practice of withholding its chipsets from customers unless they agree to pay high royalties on its patents. In re: Qualcomm Antitrust Litigation, 5:17-md-02773 (N.D. Cal., filed April 6, 2017).

The dispute at the intersection of antitrust and technology could lead to damages as high as $5 billion to a class of hundreds of millions of consumers; some have called it the largest class action in history. U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh of San Jose in her certification order said there was "substantial," "strong" and "compelling" evidence to support certification.

Koh appointed Srinivasan to serve as co-lead counsel in the case, writing, "Ms. Srinivasan has considerable experience litigating patent cases, including regarding the technology at issue, and complex class actions. In addition, of all the Plaintiffs' counsel in these consolidated cases, Ms. Srinivasan is the only attorney who has tried a case before this Court, and Ms. Srinivasan was excellent at trial."

In 2018 she scored a $706.2 million jury verdict for client HouseCanary Inc., a data analytics start-up, in a misappropriation of trade secrets case; in 2019 a judge confirmed the jury's decision and let stand a final award of more than $740 million. Title Source Inc. v. HourseCanary Inc., 2016-CI-06300 (Tex. 73d Jud. Dist. Ct., filed April 12, 2016).

-- John Roemer