Sarah Guske

Sarah J. Guske is a partner in Baker Botts L.L.P.’s intellectual property group and is the department chair of the firm’s California IP group.

She’s been with the firm since 2016 and, along with her JD, she holds summa cum laude undergraduate degrees in physics and electrical and electronics engineering — making her among the few women lawyers with those academic achievements.

Guske represents clients in technologies that span a variety of sectors: telecommunication protocols and systems, optical components and systems, MPEG multimedia data for broadcast and graphic chipset design.

“It’s an exciting time to be a patent litigator,” Guske said. “And it’s a busy time.”

Guske has also served as an adjunct professor of PTAB trials and patent law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, at the University of Colorado School of Law and at UC College of the Law, San Francisco.

Clients include Tile Inc., Qualcomm, Inc., Chime Financial Inc., Eaton Corp., Twilio Inc., T-Mobile US, Inc., and Infinera Corp.

For Tile, which makes tracking devices that attach to users’ belongings, Guske and her team achieved a final motion to dismiss a patent challenge after three years of contentious litigation. The court found all asserted claims patent ineligible. Linquet Technologies Inc. v. Tile Inc., 3:20-cv-05153 (N.D. Cal., filed July 27, 2020).

Plaintiff Linquet voluntarily dismissed its appeal shortly before the opening brief was due.

“It was [Tile’s] first major patent litigation,” Guske said of the San Mateo-based company founded in 2012. “And we won for them two different ways” — in court and at the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The PTAB issued its decision invalidating all claims in Tile’s favor despite Linquet’s attempt to terminate the inter partes review. “They were hoping to avoid the double kill,” Guske said.

During the litigation, Tile was acquired by Life360 Inc. for $205 million. “To eliminate these claims early was satisfactory,” Guske said. “It’s dead and buried and everybody is ready to move on.”

Guske represents Qualcomm in trial and appellate matters. At the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Baker Botts team defended against Apple Inc.’s challenge of Qualcomm’s success in establishing the validity of patents related to various user interface features of smartphones. The circuit panel agreed with Baker Botts’ argument that Apple lacked standing to bring the appeal. Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc., 2020-1642 (F. Cir., op. filed Apr. 7, 2021).

“I’m still having a great time keeping busy in the patent litigation space,” Guske said.

—John Roemer