Anne Cappella

Cappella, a specialist in patent litigation, leads Weil’s strategic IP counseling practice. She has been with the firm for more than 25 years. After obtaining a degree in electrical engineering, she worked for IBM for four years before law school. She is a member of the firm’s global Women@Weil leadership board, an affinity group focused on advancing women lawyers.

The pandemic, Cappella said, “did not bring significant change to my work, because we have always staffed our Patent and Trademark Office cases from different Weil offices connected by audio and now video. In fact, these days I see more of my team face to face via video than formerly.”

In early 2021 she was handed a formidable assignment: defending HP Inc. in a new wave of litigation filed by the California Institute of Technology. In January 2020, Caltech obtained a $1.1 billion jury verdict in the Central District against Apple Inc. and Broadcom Inc. on the same set of Caltech patents relating to error-correcting code for data transmission technology.

The earlier verdict is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Cal Tech’s new complaints, filed in the Western District of Texas instead of in California, allege that HP—and Dell Technologies Inc. in a separate case—made infringing products that use a specific Wi-Fi standard known as 802.11n. The California Institute of Technology v. HP Inc., 6:20-cv-01041 (W.D. Tex., filed Nov. 11, 2020).

“We’re assisting HP dig into the issues and hoping for a better result,” Cappella said. “We’re before a different judge in a different jurisdiction.”

On April 9, 2021, she moved to dismiss Caltech’s first amended complaint, contending that the plaintiff’s allegations that HP made products that comply with a certain Wi-Fi standard is insufficient to support an infringement claim. She pointed to “Caltech’s admission that there are non-infringing ways to practice the standards” and termed legally insufficient Caltech’s assertion “that HP must infringe because the asserted patents supposedly provide an ‘efficient and cost effective’ manner in which to implement the standards.”

“The pressure is definitely on” to obtain a better result for HP than other counsel did for Apple and Broadcom, Cappella said.

In another matter, Cappella is defending General Electric Co.’s GE Wind Energy LLC unit’s wind turbine technology in an arbitration before the U.S. International Trade Commission. Her client has claimed patent infringement by Siemens Gamesa Renewal Energy Eolica SLU; the disputes arose under a settlement and license agreement between the companies that GE terminated after the Siemens-Gamesa merger. Variable Speed Wind Turbine Generators and Components Thereof, 337-TA-1218 (USITC, instituted Sept. 8, 2020).

“The patents at issue are about making the turbines work well with the grid,” Cappella said. “Wind turbines and renewable energy are coming into their own right now.” A remote hearing on the matter is set for June.

— John Roemer