Bernard Chao
Bernard Chao provides strategic intellectual property advice to established and early-stage companies. This practice includes validity and infringement investigations and related opinion work, patent portfolio analysis, intellectual property licensing, appellate and patent litigation.
Bernard has worked both as in-house counsel and at large law firms. As Vice President of Legal Strategy at Covad Communications (the first national DSL carrier), Bernard was responsible for a broad range of legal issues that arose as Covad grew from a small Silicon Valley startup to a public company with thousands of employees nationwide. Among his many responsibilities, Bernard ran Covad's patent program and oversaw a successful patent defense against Bell Atlantic. Bernard also managed a series of antitrust and commercial lawsuits against SBC that ended in a business agreement valued at over five hundred million dollars.
In private practice at the Silicon Valley offices of Wilson, Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Pennie & Edmonds, Bernard litigated patent cases and provided general intellectual property advice for clients involved with a wide range of technologies including flash memory, virtual machines, mainframe storage systems, semiconductor manufacturing processes, modems, networking hardware, anti-virus software, printers, object oriented systems and software development tools.
Representative Experience at Chao Hadidi Stark & Barker- Bernard is currently serving as a Special Master in one of the largest group of patent cases in the country involving approximately fifty different lawsuits and thirty patents spread across two patent families. His role is to advise the court on all the substantive pretrial issues including any motions related to claim construction, infringement and validity.
- Bernard has advised clients regarding the scope and validity of patents including preparation of formal opinions in the semiconductor, medical image processing, optics, networking, communications, computer security and e-commerce fields.
- Bernard has been retained by established law firms to serve as patent co-counsel in a number of different litigations across the country involving computer and electronics as well as medical device technology.
- Bernard has represented parties in due diligence in connection with both the buy and sell side of patent acquisitions.
- Bernard has represented several different clients in patent license negotiations.
Bar Memberships
Bernard is admitted to practice in the state of California, the U.S. Patent Trademark Office, the Federal and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and United States Supreme Court as well as several U.S. district courts throughout the country.
PublicationsChao, "After eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange LLC : The Changing Landscape for Patent Remedies", (to be published) Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology, Vol.9, Issue 2 (June 2008).
Chao, "Obtaining Advice of Counsel After Seagate", Vol. 32, No. 4 New Matter (2007).
Chao, "Blending Law and Facts: A Recipe for Persuasive Briefs," Vol. 81 Illinois Bar Journal, p. 103 (Feb. 1993).