Christa M. Anderson

As a top patent and copyright litigator at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, Christa M. Anderson—who has been with the firm since 1996—has extensive experience in high-stakes, complex IP cases.

She’s currently leading Google LLC’s defense team as it responds to a nine-patent infringement challenge. She’s lead counsel to Facebook and Instagram LLC in a five-patent suit. And she represents DexCom Inc. in sprawling patent litigation with its main rival in the manufacture and sale of continuous glucose monitors.

Part of her skill is her ability to boil down abstract concepts to make it easy for judges and juries to understand the central issues, and part of that talent is grounded in Anderson’s undergraduate degree in mathematics, she said.

“I love math, and at a very high level, it helps with the logic of presenting a defense or a plaintiff’s case. And at a very granular level, of course, a lot of technology uses mathematical concepts.”

She has long represented Google, and she was part of the team led by law partner Robert A. Van Nest that established in a protracted $8.8 billion multi-court battle that the client’s use of Oracle’s Java programming code in its Android mobile operating system fell within the fair use doctrine—an outcome upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2021. Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., 18-956 (S.Ct., op. filed. April 5, 2021).

At trial in that case, she and the team successfully simplified the issue by bringing into the courtroom a file cabinet. “It was the simplest possible analogy,” she said. “We demonstrated the idea of organizing code into files. We always look for the everyday anchors people can relate to.”

In her current case, Anderson is defending Google against claims that its noise-cancelling technology for earphones, smartphones and smart home devices infringes patents held by the plaintiff. Jawbone Innovations LLC v. Google LLC, 6:21-cv-00985 (W.D. Texas, filed Sept. 23, 2021).

In her case for Facebook and Instagram, Anderson is defending against claims that Facebook Live and Instagram Live products infringe on patents held by a plaintiff that created a Walk Talkie smartphone app. Voxer Inc. v. Instagram LLC et al., 6:20-cv- 00011 (W.D. Texas, filed Jan. 7, 2020).

And in representing DexCom, Anderson is in a battle that involves rivals in the multibillion-dollar blood glucose monitoring device market. Her client sued and was countersued; each side asserted patent infringement over calibration capabilities, water resistant sealing design and other issues. DexCom Inc. v. Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., 6:21-cv-00690 (W.D. Texas, filed June 30, 2021); Abbott Diabetes Care Inc. v. DexCom Inc., 1:21-cv- 00977 (D. Del., filed July 1, 2021).

“All my current cases involve very interesting technology and products,” Anderson said. “All are like a mini-college education for me. I’ve been very fortunate.”

--John Roemer