Sonal N. Mehta

PALO ALTO - Working on Big Tech cases at the heart of Silicon Valley, Sonal N. Mehta recalls the day in 2021 when she heard that longtime client Facebook Inc. was changing its name to one that sounded a lot like hers.

"I immediately had a vision of myself standing up in court and saying, 'Sonal Mehta for Meta,'" she laughed. "And then I did."

The Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP partner joined the firm in 2019 after working at Durie Tangri LLP and at Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP. At UC Berkeley School of Law, she was editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. She then clerked for Judge Paul R. Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who is now retired.

"Super useful," Mehta said of the clerkship. "In chambers, you get to see the decision-making process from the other side of the bench, so you can understand how your arguments factor into the judge's opinions. At the Federal Circuit, people focus on the patents, but that court has a very broad docket that includes substantive law well beyond patents."

Facebook became a client when Mehta was at Durie Tangri and remained on board when she moved to WilmerHale. In February 2022, a 9th Circuit panel affirmed a win she'd obtained when a lower court dismissed antitrust claims challenging Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp and its policies governing developer access to Facebook's platforms. Reveal Chat Holdco LLC v. Meta Platforms Inc., 21-15863 (9th Cir., op. filed Feb. 28, 2022).

The plaintiff, a dating platform that used data from Facebook, alleged a "brazen" plot by Facebook to monopolize domestic and worldwide markets for "Social Data" and "Social Advertising" in violation of the Sherman Act. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman of San Jose dismissed the claims on the merit and as time-barred. Freeman held that Meta's prior course of sharing user data with third-party apps did not give rise to any ongoing duty to deal with developers.

"Facebook and a lot of tech companies have very diversified business interests and they get sued a lot over novel issues," Mehta said. "That keeps things interesting."

She currently leads the WilmerHale team defending Facebook in two large private antitrust class actions consolidated in the Northern District that seeks more than $2 trillion in damages. One was filed by a group of Facebook users and the other by a group of advertisers. The complaints allege that Facebook has monopolized social media markets to lure users onto its platform. Klein v. Meta Platforms Inc., 3:20-cv-08570 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 3, 2020).

"So far, we've gotten several antitrust claims dismissed, but some survived and we're in fact discovery on those," Mehta said.

In June 2022, a team led by Mehta obtained a complete victory for Meta when a state court judge dismissed all claims by an app developer that changes to the Facebook platform effectively shut down its business by depriving it of access to photos required by an app called Pikinis. Mehta's anti-SLAPP dismissal is on appeal. Six4Three LLC v. Meta Platforms Inc., CIV533328 (S. Mateo Co. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 24, 2017).

"This is such a great place to practice," Mehta said of her work at WilmerHale. "I count myself among the very, very lucky."