Bernard Chao

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 Education
J.D
Duke School of Law (1990)

B.S.E.E
Purdue University (1987)


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.

Publications

Chao, "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).