Quyen Ta

When VNG Corp. was sued in a copyright infringement case, the Vietnam-based company turned to Ta.

“There’s very few Vietnamese speaking lawyers that can litigate cases in federal court,” she said. “Retaining the language that I grew up with is now a business asset.”

VNG was sued in the Central District of California by music label Lang Van for allegedly infringing on more than 2,000 of its songs by making them available on a streaming service. It sought more than $300 million in damages. Lang Van, Inc. v. VNG Corporation, 14-cv-00100 (C.D. Cal., filed Jan. 22, 2014).

But Vietnam’s first billion-dollar tech company was wary of the language barrier that might come with hiring an attorney who only spoke English. Ta eased those concerns.

“I can communicate directly with clients without a translator,” she said. “There’s immediate trust and rapport.”

Being able to understand Vietnamese translations of depositions, Ta was able to call out and fix inaccuracies. After five years of litigation and extensive discovery, she secured dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, among other arguments. The judge agreed that there were no specific allegations or evidence that anyone in the United States used the streaming service to download the disputed songs.

The veteran trial attorney who often takes on tech cases also represented Extra Space Storage in a class action over inflated rental rates and false advertising. Ionescu v. Extra Space Storage Inc., 19-cv-02226 (N.D. Cal., filed March 24, 2019).

Ta said she immediately moved to compel arbitration. When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a California Supreme Court case invalidating arbitration agreements that preclude public injunctive relief is not preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act, she employed the decision and convinced U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to enforce the contracts.

Asked about her role mentoring younger attorneys, the class action defense lawyer responded it’s “incumbent on me to teach others how to” build successful practices to “be able to better control their fate.”

“Law firms aren’t nonprofits — money drives the bus,” she said. “If I can teach people how to generate money, then we’re all happy.”

Ta is a co-founder of the Berkeley Law First Generation Professionals Institute. As a daughter of parents who came to the country as refugees, she said she was lucky to have mentors that made her feel as if she belongs in the industry and wants to do the same.

— Winston Cho