Tessa Schwartz is a partner in the San Francisco office and co-chair of the firm’s Technology Transactions Group. She has an active practice counseling companies on intellectual property issues, and negotiating complex intellectual property and commercial agreements. She advises on a range of strategic transactions, including key patent licenses and acquisitions, technology procurement agreements and complex development, collaboration, joint-venture and distribution deals. Ms. Schwartz also regularly advises companies on the IP aspects of their M&A transactions.
Ms. Schwartz’s M&A experience includes advising Intel on the IP aspects of a string of strategic acquisitions, including Intel’s $7.7 billion acquisition of McAfee, and its $884 million acquisition of Wind River. She has also advised Yahoo! on a series of strategic transactions, including its acquisitions of 5to1 Holding Corp. and interclick inc.; the sales of the social bookmarking service, Delicious and Yahoo! HotJobs; the launching of Hortonworks to accelerate the development of Hadoop, an open-source software platform; and, more recently, a series of strategic “acqui-hires” and acquisitions of mobile social-media applications and talent. She has also represented SuccessFactors, a market-leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions, on the intellectual property issues related to its $3.4 billion agreement to be acquired by SAP; Autodesk in its acquisition of Socialcam, Inc., a mobile video application; and Altera Corporation in its acquisition of TPACK from AppliedMicro.
Ms. Schwartz's clients include companies in the telecommunications, wireless, software, hardware, consumer electronics and products, semiconductor, social media, Internet and other fields. She also has a particular focus on the Cleantech sector (including the solar, energy-efficiency, renewable-energy and other sectors) and sustainability issues.
Ms. Schwartz provides clients with prelitigation and litigation advice. She frequently advises executives and senior management on strategic business, legal and commercial issues, including the structuring of transactions, risk management and contract compliance. She also counsels clients with respect to a wide variety of IP issues, including patent exhaustion and implied licenses, standing and standards, the protection of trade secrets and the development and distribution of open-source software.
In addition to her transactional expertise, Ms. Schwartz’s litigation background includes representing clients in arbitration, as well as in state and federal courts in such areas as antitrust, false advertising, unfair competition, breach of contract, securities, trademark, copyright and trade secret law. Her litigation experience includes complex, multidistrict and class action litigation, as well as appellate advocacy.
Ms. Schwartz’s pro bono efforts have included work for The Biomimicry Institute, Goodwill, Common Sense Media, and Business for Social Responsibility; IP advice to a variety of cultural, media and arts organizations; and other assistance for nonprofits. She recently received the Wiley W. Manuel Award for Pro Bono Legal Services from the State Bar of California.
Ms. Schwartz is recommended as a leading lawyer by Chambers USA 2013 and Legal 500 U.S. 2014, and was named to The Daily Journal’s Top 20 Under 40 list in 2009.
Ms. Schwartz received her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1991. In 1996, she earned her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif.
