Paul Hastings Welcomes Premier Tech-Focused IP Litigation Team in Silicon Valley and Washington

PALO ALTO, Calif. and WASHINGTON (March 4, 2024) – In a move that further enhances its top-of-market global IP practice, Paul Hastings LLP announced today that a premier six-partner team of IP litigators, including Shamita Etienne-Cummings, Lisa Nguyen, Eric Lancaster, James Gagen, and Grace Wang is joining the firm. Etienne-Cummings and Gagen will be based in Washington, D.C., while Nguyen and Lancaster will be located in Palo Alto, and Wang will be in New York. The sixth partner will join in Washington, D.C.

With a wealth of IP and technical experience, the group focuses on litigation and matters before U.S. District Courts, the International Trade Commission (ITC), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The team joins from Allen & Overy LLP and works across Big Tech and a range of high-growth industries, including AI, AR/VR, e-commerce, software and hardware systems, internet, semiconductor, telecommunications, mobile devices, consumer electronics, and payment systems.

“With clients facing increasingly complex IP challenges due to global competition and converging technologies, adding this exceptional team to our leading practice continues our strategy of enhancing our platform with premier talent that brings proven experience in key sectors,” said firm Chair Frank Lopez. “Deepening our IP litigation bench in Silicon Valley and Washington will further position us to capture additional market share at the top of the market.”

“We’re very excited to welcome this team, and their significant impact, to our IP practice,” said Naveen Modi, global co-chair of the Intellectual Property practice. “Their depth in popular patent litigation venues will add more firepower to our already impressive group. With this new team and the synergies they bring, we look forward to continuing to meeting our clients’ goals and providing them with the best solutions and results, including on their most important, bet-the-company matters.”

A first-chair litigator, Etienne-Cummings represents technology clients before district courts, the Federal Circuit, the PTAB and the ITC in matters involving mobile communications, smart consumer electronics, semiconductor design and processing, media, aerospace, defense, consumer electronic devices, and medical devices. She advises on complex patent matters and is ranked as a Patent Star on Managing IP's IP Stars list and in IAM Patent 1000. Prior to her legal career, she was an electrical engineer and program manager for GTE Corporation in the mobile telecommunications industry, where she designed and implemented wireless communication and satellite systems.

Nguyen focuses on patent and trade secret litigation, and has a proven track record representing top technology companies as lead counsel. She represents both plaintiffs and defendants in complex multi-jurisdictional, multi-patent cases before district courts across the country, the ITC, and the PTAB. She has been listed among Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence, as one of the Top 50 Women in the PTAB by the PTAB Bar Association, and an Asian Leader Worth Watching by Diversity Journal.

Lancaster is a former managing partner of Allen & Overy’s Silicon Valley and San Francisco offices, with a practice focusing on patent litigation across a wide range of sectors and technologies. He represents clients in all aspects of the product life cycle for matters involving medical devices, software, social networking, mobile devices, semiconductor devices, computer hardware, and pharmaceuticals. Listed in IAM Patent 1000, he has also taught the Antitrust and Innovation course at the University of California Berkeley School of Law for half a decade.

Gagen is known for his deep experience with Section 337 matters at the ITC and his many successes in investigations representing complainants and respondents. His IP litigation practice also includes appearing before federal tribunals around the country on matters involving international trade and competition matters.

Wang’s practice focuses on PTAB and ITC matters, including post-grant proceedings, infringement, patent validity, freedom to operate, and due diligence analysis. As a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and neuroscience, Wang works with complex technologies, including medical devices, integrated circuits, signal processing, disease diagnostics, and cloud computing.

The group represents clients including Google, Toshiba, Kioxia, Curiosity Stream, Wonderland, Meta Platforms, Realtek Semiconductor, ResMed, Extreme Networks, and Marvell Semiconductor.

The addition of this group continues to enhance the Paul Hastings platform in Northern California on the heels of transactional teams that joined from Goodwin and Cooley, including Palo Alto-based private equity partner Scott Joachim and capital markets partner David Ambler.

The new team also reflects the firm’s continued commitment to serving client needs across core litigation practices, including complex litigation, financial services investigation and regulation, white collar defense, investigations, and arbitration. Notable additions to the IP practice include Rudy Kim in Palo Alto, Jason Raeburn in London, and Doug Sawyer in Chicago. Other litigation hires include international arbitration partner Garreth Wong, leading white collar and securities litigator Brad Bondi in Washington, D.C., elite complex commercial litigator Paul R. Genender in Houston, preeminent complex commercial litigator Susan Leader in Century City, and premier commercial and securities litigator Jennifer Conn in New York.

About Paul Hastings

With widely recognized elite teams in finance, mergers & acquisitions, private equity, restructuring and special situations, litigation, employment, and real estate, Paul Hastings is a premier law firm providing intellectual capital and superior execution globally to the world’s leading investment banks, asset managers, and corporations. For more information, visit www.paulhastings.com.