Ka-on Li

Li, a Jones Day partner specializing in licensing and technology transfers, represents clients in the technology, medical, pharmaceutical, life sciences, food and beverage, retail, consulting, financial, fashion, consumer goods, telecommunications, education, media and entertainment fields.

Like most, she works from home now, due to the coronavirus. "People were counting until day 100 away from the office," she said. "We've given up on that. We hoped it was temporary, but now it's hard to see an end in sight. However, the beauty of this job is that I negotiate and draft contracts, so I just need a phone and a laptop, or maybe just a laptop."

Li studied law and practiced in Australia, where for a time she was a clerk known as a tipstaff for a justice on the New South Wales Supreme Court. She joined Jones Day in 2013 and made partner in 2018.

"Coming out of law school I wanted to be a litigator, but when I got to try different things at a firm I discovered IP and technology transfers and loved it," she said. "I had a great run in Australia, but Silicon Valley is the Disneyland, the mother ship, for tech lawyers."

Li is glad to be in California, but she noted that the pandemic is less of a problem in Australia. "There's no shelter in place anymore because they controlled the numbers," she said. "They're having a better time. None of my friends is working from home now. But I'm not looking back."

Despite Covid-19 constraints, deal-making presses on. Li played a key role in advising Santa Clara-based Nvidia Corp. on its $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies Ltd., an Israeli-American supplier of computer networking products. She counseled on intellectual property, technology and commercial aspects of the due diligence of Mellanox. She said she was able to penetrate the jargon of the supercomputer industry to ensure that her advice was easy to understand and also specific to the world of artificial intelligence, scientific computing and data analytics. The deal closed in April 2020.

Li was lead external intellectual property counsel to vehicular safety lighting products provider Truck-Lite Co. LLC in connection with Genstar Capital's significant investment in late 2019. And she aided SunPower Corp.'s spin-off of its solar panel production operations into a new public company.

"Deals come and go regardless of the pandemic," Li said, "especially in the technology world. I'm lucky to be in an area of business that hasn't been as adversely affected as many. Digital health and the pharmas are busier than ever. More in the telemedicine space is expected to roll out later this year. Working with these clients means there's never a boring moment."

-- John Roemer