Sean S. Pak

Sean S. Pak is co-chair of the national intellectual property litigation practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP and a founding member of its AI practice group. He's been with the firm since 2009.

Clients include Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Google LLC, Verkada Inc., Vicor Corp. and MediaTek Inc.

Pak's parents immigrated from South Korea. "I didn't have any lawyers in my family, but I learned very valuable lessons and a strong work ethic from my father and my mother who gave up their careers to pursue a different life for me and my sister in America," he said.

Pak has a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School and degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. That training has been an advantage, Pak said, because "it allows me to quickly and deeply understand the underlying technology in IP disputes and engage with client engineers and technical experts to not only understand the technical facts of the case, but to challenge the opposing side's assumptions behind their characterization of the technology."

At first, Pak's father, a former Korean military officer, wanted him to be an engineer. "But now, he appreciates that I have found a worthwhile path to help technology companies both in the United States and in Asia deal with very important problems and disputes by combining my engineering and legal training."

In two recent significant cases for Samsung and Google, Pak scored defense wins. In plaintiff-friendly Marshall, Texas, Samsung faced $50 million in damages over alleged patent infringement claims. Pak led the defense that obtained dismissal before trial of two of the asserted patents, then persuaded a jury to reject all remaining infringement assertions. Evolved Wireless LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 2:21-cv-00033 (E.D. Tex., filed Feb. 1, 2021).

"I believe it was the first defense-side jury verdict in that venue for nearly two years," Pak said. "The case involved complex cellular patents that were asserted against virtually all of Samsung's phones. It was paramount that we figure out a way to simplify our technical arguments and present them in a compelling way to our jurors, none of whom had any technical training."

For Google, Pak obtained a post-verdict judgment as a matter of law, reversing a jury award of $32 million for the plaintiff on claims of $3 billion in damages on smart speaker technology. Sonos, Inc. v. Google LLC, 3:20-cv-06754 (N.D. Cal., filed Sept. 28, 2020).

"It was rewarding to see the final written opinion, in which the Court acknowledged Google as the true innovator," Pak said. He credited firm teamwork and added a quote from Rudyard Kipling with a pun on his name: "For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."

-- John Roemer