Krista Schwartz

After college, Krista Schwartz worked as an engineer at AT&T Bell Labs where she found her true calling.

"When AT&T applied for patents on work that I was doing, I became interested in IP law and decided to go to law school at night while continuing to work as an engineer.

Today, equipped with 25 years of IP experience, she's co-chair of Willkie's IP litigation practice group and focuses on representing some of the world's largest technology companies in patent, copyright, trade secret and complex IP cases.

One of her notable achievements in the past year was leading the declaratory judgment case that Synopsys brought against Bell Semiconductor in the District of Delaware.

This case was pivotal, as Bell Semiconductor had initiated over 90 different cases against Synopsys' customers, claiming infringement of six patents related to semiconductor design techniques.

"Bringing the DJ case allowed Synopsys to successfully resolve the cases against its customers in a single forum rather than having to step into and defend its customers in the many different customer cases," Schwartz explained. "After the Delaware court granted the first two of Synopsys' summary judgment motions and invited Synopsys to move for attorney's fees, Bell Semiconductor agreed to dismiss all remaining customer cases as well as its counterclaims against Synopsys, handing Synopsys a complete defense victory."

She added that in an effort to maintain the various customer suits rather than have a single court resolve the issues in those cases, Bell Semiconductor vigorously pursued a motion to dismiss the Delaware DJ case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

"Defeating the motion to dismiss and convincing the Delaware court to set an aggressive case schedule were significant milestones that set the case up for an early and efficient resolution," Schwartz said.

In a separate matter for Synopsys, she led successful defense of an ICC arbitration initiated by Siemens Industry Software over its claim that Siemens was licensed to four Synopsys patents under a Patent Licensing and Settlement Agreement between Synopsys and Siemens.

Following a weeklong arbitration, Siemens' claim of a patent license was rejected by the Arbitration Tribunal.

Looking at trends, she made one observation: "Non-practicing entity cases seem to be on the rise again, with NPE filings trending up."