Krista S. Schwartz

Hogan Lovells

San Francisco

Intellectual property litigation

Schwartz is defending HP Inc. in a challenging five-patent lawsuit brought by Cypress Lake Software in Texas federal court. The software company claimed certain Alphabet Inc.-owned Google technology in HP's Chromebook was infringed.

The Hogan Lovells attorney sought to move the HP case, one of four, to the Northern District of California, and successfully obtained a writ of mandamus from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

"It is a fairly unusual occurrence," Schwartz said.

The strategy produced a road map for cases involving customer-supplier scenarios in which a defendant-customer seeks to move a case to the venue where the supplier is based.

Through Schwartz's leadership, the defense was able to significantly narrow the case by invalidating many of the alleged patent claims.

For the remaining patents in the suit, she helped with formulating an inter partes review and re-examination strategy. Schwartz described her strategy as "death by a thousand cuts.'

"We tried a strategic approach in trying to attack patents in different ways," she said, combining discovery victories and sanctions motions. Schwartz also defended Google employees at deposition.

After Cypress Lakes and related third parties were evasive in discovery, the court ordered production of hundreds of documents on Cypress Lake's privilege log, re-opened depositions due to the withheld documents, and sanctioned Cypress Lakes and related third parties.

She then moved to stay the case after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office instituted IPRs and re-examinations on all the patents in the case. In January, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila of San Jose granted the stay. Cypress Lake Software LLC v. HP Inc., 18-CV06144 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 5, 2018)..

Schwartz also regularly works with Synopsys Inc., handling pre-litigation analysis and counseling and regularly evaluating infringement allegations.

She said clients are taking a step back and looking at the 10,000-foot view in IP.

"A number of patent clients are more broadly looking at IP to see if they should focus on patents versus copyrights and trade secrets in terms of their own protection," Schwartz said.

-- Justin Kloczko