Ericka J. Schulz

Overview

Ericka Schulz is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group in the firm's San Diego (Del Mar) office.

Areas of Practice

Ericka is a seasoned intellectual property litigator who assists her clients in defending or enforcing their intellectual property rights throughout the United States. Ericka’s cases focus on litigating patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret disputes. She has considerable trial and pre-trial experience in all of the popular patent venues such as the Texas, Delaware, California, Illinois, and New Jersey district courts, and before the International Trade Commission (ITC). Ericka has a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering and is experienced in representing clients in many diverse technical fields, including electrical, software, telecommunications, wireless devices, networking, optics, mechanical and medical devices.

Ericka is also registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and counsels clients in prosecuting patent and trademark applications, prosecuting patent reexaminations, or inter partes reviews (IPRs), and licensing portfolios. She also counsels clients on overall intellectual property protection strategies and conducts IP due diligence for corporate transactions.

Prior to entering private practice, Ericka was an electrical engineer at WindRiver Systems, Inc., designing embedded systems for three years. She also completed her Master’s Thesis at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories involving a bio-medical software application for DNA microarrays. Ericka studied internationally in a number of countries, including Japan, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and South Africa.

Experience

INVT SPE LLC v. HTC (New Jersey) and Certain LTE- and 3G- Cellular Communications Devices, 337-TA-1138 (ITC). Represent HTC Corporation and HTC America in a multi-district patent litigation against a Fortress backed non-practicing entity, INVT, regarding eight asserted patents. We successfully invalidated a number of patents through inter partes review petitions, forced INVT to drop the majority of the asserted patents, and received an initial determination of non-infringement by ALJ McNamara in the ITC on the remaining three asserted patents.
Evolved Wireless v. HTC (Delaware). Represent HTC Corporation and HTC America, Inc., in a five-patent lawsuit relating to Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) alleged to cover the LTE standard. HTC has also asserted a counter-claim for breach of contract alleging that Evolved Wireless has failed to license its patents on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. HTC successfully forced Evolved to drop three out of the five patents, successfully invalidated one patent in front of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and HTC subsequently won on the last patent in summary judgment in regards to its license defense.
Rosetta Wireless v. HTC (N.D. of Illinois). Represented HTC Corporation and HTC America, Inc. in a patent lawsuit relating to storage of data files in mobile wireless devices.
Represented Align Technology, Inc. in various patent infringement matters relating to its patents directed to clear dental aligner technology before the International Trade Commission and in Texas district court.
Intellect Wireless v. HTC (N.D. Ill.). Represented HTC Corporation and HTC America, Inc., in a two-patent lawsuit relating to sending pictures to a paging receiver. The accused technology is multimedia messaging service (MMS). After a four-day bench trial, the court found the patents were unenforceable due to inequitable conduct—a decision which led to an order for reimbursement of attorney fees.
Represented multi-billion dollar computer manufacturer in a high stakes patent litigation in the Eastern District of Texas defending its computer operating system, and successfully overturning a jury verdict of infringement.