The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Juan Pablo González litigates patent, trade secret, and breach-of-contract cases at every stage, handling trials in arbitration and federal court. His practices include matters related to virtual and augmented reality, image and video recognition, cellular technologies, and web- and mobile-based collaborations and communications, as well as biotech and medical devices.
At Stanford Law School, he was an articles and member editor for the Stanford Law Review and the lead online editor of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. He earned an M.A. in public policy focusing on law and economics in the intellectual property (IP) space.
Daniel Knauss is an experienced trial lawyer and life sciences litigator focusing on high-stakes patent, trade secret, and commercial disputes. He litigates matters involving complex technologies including biosimilars and antibody drugs, agricultural tech and biofuels, cancer and antiviral medicines, and medical devices. Dan also handles cases for high-tech companies in the autonomous vehicle, machine learning, semiconductor design, processor cooling, optics, and software industries. Dan represents branded pharmaceutical companies in abbreviated new drug application litigation and both reference product and biosimilar companies in Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act litigation.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
Juan Pablo: My practice area primarily focuses on patent, trade secret, and breach of contract disputes and spans a range of disciplines, including medical devices, biotech, and AI, as well as immersive digital technologies and collaborative platforms.
Daniel: I am a trial lawyer with a diverse practice centered on life sciences litigation, primarily in the IP areas of patents and trade secrets but with a healthy mix of business dispute cases as well.
What types of clients do you represent?
Juan Pablo: I’m fortunate to represent a range of clients, from industry leaders in the tech space to emerging medical device and biotech companies, in both enforcement and defensive actions. For example, I’ve helped certain clients enforce their patent rights in the medical device field while defending others against allegations of patent and copyright infringement in the social media and AI spaces.
Daniel: Clients I represent in life sciences include large pharma, small innovator, biotech, and agtech companies. I also frequently represent companies outside life sciences in the diverse high-technology areas typical for a Silicon Valley-based IP litigator.
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
Juan Pablo: I primarily litigate patent and trade secret cases in federal court. However, I’ve also had experience litigating trade secret matters in arbitrations and representing clients in administrative proceedings before the PTAB.
Daniel: My patent litigation matters are commonly litigated in the federal courts of Delaware, California, and Texas. I am also frequently involved in PTAB post-grant opposition proceedings, Federal Circuit appeals, and International Trade Commission investigations. Trade secret and business dis-pute matters can often be fought in state or federal courts or in arbitration.
How did you choose this practice area?
Juan Pablo: I came to this practice area in a roundabout way. With a background in philosophy and economics, I enjoyed making sense of abstract ideas and applying conceptual frameworks across disciplines. That same skill set serves me well as an IP litigator. I distill complex technologies and dam-ages theories so that they are accessible to judges and juries and craft legal arguments tailored to each client’s specific circumstances.
Daniel: As a young adult, I was torn between pursuing a career in sciences and the law. I initially pursued the science route and completed an advanced degree in the life sciences. I never lost my interest in the law, however, and was happy to discover that a career in patent law would let me combine my two favorite subjects. I found that I could engage in the service-oriented career of providing legal advice and representation while maintaining a clear focus on science and helping innovative companies protect and defend their discoveries.
What is a “typical” day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
Juan Pablo: There is no such thing as a typical day. I often compare being an IP litigation associate to being a medical resident: Every day brings new challenges and learning opportunities based on the needs of your cases and the experiences you accumulate. Like in residency, the learning curve is steep. While I’ve practiced long enough to see several case life cycles, my role in each case has varied from running discovery and working with technical experts to prep-ping trial witnesses, and my responsibilities have increased year to year. As a result, depending on what is happening in my cases on a given day, I might be drafting a brief, taking or defending a deposition, finalizing trial disclosures, or juggling all of these at once.
Daniel: My diverse practice means that I work on case teams that can range from one to dozens of lawyers, and typically, I am deeply involved in anywhere from three to eight highly active matters. We are fortunate at Cooley to have a large roster of early-stage innovation companies, so I am also frequently called upon to provide on-the-spot IP strategy advice well in advance of any possible downstream litigation. When not working on active matters that are advancing to trial, I devote my energies to business development tasks, such as speaking at conferences, publishing practice updates, and pitching for new business. I also take my duty to mentor associates seriously and devote all the time and energy to it that I can.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
Juan Pablo: I would recommend taking advantage of any IP courses your law school offers. Patent law is highly idiosyncratic, and having a solid grasp of governing statutes and doctrines will help you hit the ground running. Additionally, consider taking non-law classes outside your undergraduate major. While in law school, I enrolled in several courses offered through other graduate programs as part of my master’s degree. Doing so exposed me to fields relevant to my clients’ businesses, such as data analysis in healthcare, while making me comfortable working across disciplines.
Daniel: A solid foundation in the doctrinal areas of patent, contract, and corporate law is essential. Ultimately, however, we are litigators and trial lawyers, so skills and experience in written and oral advocacy, as well as deep comfort with Rules of Civil Procedure and Evidence, are even more critical. Most important, successful IP litigators combine a genuine desire to serve the needs of clients with an insatiable curiosity to learn the clients’ novel technologies so they can eventually teach judges and juries about them.
What do you like best about your practice area?
Juan Pablo: I love that I get to be a student every day. While continuing to master elements of my practice area, I’m always learning, whether diving into new technologies or researching nuanced aspects of patent and trade secret law. These experiences continually hone my knowledge and skill set. I also regularly benefit from Cooley’s strong mentorship culture, where senior attorneys make themselves available for conversations ranging from project-specific guidance to broader career advice.
Daniel: A career in IP litigation never gets stale. In addition to the perennial thrill of learning the cutting-edge technologies our clients create, the doctrines of patent and trade secret law include several intrinsic points of tension that judges and Congress look to for ensuring that IP protection is serving its purpose of promoting innovation but not to the point of stifling competition and free enterprise. As a result, legal doctrines are often sufficiently in flux so that a knowledgeable lawyer can employ novel arguments and creative strategies to help their clients win.
What misconceptions exist about your practice area?
Juan Pablo: That you need a technical background to be an IP litigator. In fact, I do not know any IP litigators with technical backgrounds who limit their practice to the technical field
they studied. While I certainly recommend taking coursework across disciplines and gaining exposure to technical fields, learning how to learn will likely serve you better than mastering a specific subject area.
Daniel: That IP litigation is dry or boring. The practice area has its share of rote tasks, to be sure, like all areas, but IP litigation remains fascinating because it combines the ability to work on technologies of the future with matters that are often high-stakes, bet-the-company affairs. Working on litigations that are technologically complex but also highly critical to our clients’ businesses presents many challenges, but it is never boring.
What are some typical tasks that a junior lawyer would perform in this practice area?
Juan Pablo: As referenced above, an IP associate’s task list is always evolving. Cases in Cooley’s IP litigation practice reach trial more often than cases in many other practice areas. As a result, a junior attorney regularly handles tasks from both early and late stages of a case, from negotiating protective and electronically stored information orders to drafting dis-positive briefs and preparing pretrial disclosures. Additionally, because of how we staff our cases and our emphasis on mentoring, junior associates are often afforded early opportunities to take depositions, argue in court, and work directly with witnesses.
How do you see this practice area evolving in the future?
Juan Pablo: Patent and trade secret law is constantly changing, including the types of technologies being litigated andwhat qualifies for protection. While it’s hard to predict how this practice area will evolve, I feel confident in predicting that Cooley’s IP litigation practice will remain cutting-edge as we continue to both represent innovators across industries and help further define (and sometimes rewrite!) governing legal doctrines.
Daniel: In addition to the way legal doctrines are in constant flux, the strategies for different types of IP and different forums for litigation continue to evolve. For example, trade secret litigation has become much more prevalent over the past few years, and trends in patent litigation are likely to shift as well. Many predict an increase in patent assertions in response to recent changes in the administration of post-grant proceedings at the PTAB. The only certainty is that, in the future, the mix of work and industry trends available to an IP litigator will look different than it does now.