Betty Chen

Betty Chen graduated high school at age 15, college at 18 and law school at 21. In addition to becoming the youngest principal at Fish & Richardson P.C., the Houston native has been hailed as one of the firm’s most promising young leaders, a powerful trial lawyer, advocate, mentor, and role model, especially for minority and female attorneys in the largely male-dominated field of intellectual property law.

Now 37, Chen concentrates her practice on high-tech cases for technology companies, and more, including Microsoft and Adobe as well as a number of pharmaceutical companies. She represented Microsoft in this patent infringement lawsuit involving Microsoft’s “Bing” search engine technology. Looksmart Group Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. 3:17-cv-4709 (N.D. Cal.).

Looksmart accused Microsoft of using patented technology when the computer giant built the “Bing” search engine. By winning multiple motions to strike, Fish’s team defeated Looksmart’s infringement and damages claims.

“The court granted our motion to strike Looksmart’s entire infringement theory,” Chen said. “We knocked their case down brick by brick. We were on the eve of trial when Looksmart eventually dismissed the case with prejudice.”

Another big case for Chen was representing the owners of Skull Shaver LLC, a New Jersey company that produces a line of electric shaver products, in seeking a general exclusion order against a range of China-based manufacturers. In the matter of Certain Electric Shavers and Components and Accessories Thereof, No. 337-TA- 1230 (ITC).

“I love representing this company,” she said. “The founder created this line of products and they were seeing so many knockoffs coming into the market almost exclusively coming from the China-based markets.”

Chen went to the International Trade Commission and asked for a general exclusion order.

“That means it’s not tied to a specific company and it’s not tied to any specific product which isn’t an easy remedy to get because it’s such a broad remedy,” she said. “In order to get any relief from the ITC, we had to produce evidence, hire experts and show them that the patented product is produced in the United States.”

In March, the ITC issued a general exclusion order preventing all importation of infringing products, regardless of whether a specific company was named in the investigation or how the product is branded and labeled.

“Any product that looks like the skull shaver that meets the claim limitations of the patents are automatically excluded from crossing the border,” she said.

– Douglas Saunders