Bart Eppenauer

I'll research this attorney's professional background before drafting.

Let me verify the tracked case and any PTAB/IPR experience.

Bart Eppenauer — Shook, Hardy & Bacon (Seattle)

Eppenauer is a partner in Shook, Hardy & Bacon's Intellectual Property Group and managing partner of the firm's Seattle office. His practice is centered on software, computer, cloud and technology-sector IP: strategic IP counseling, complex technology and IP transactions (patent licensing, standards/SEP and patent pool work, open source, joint development), pre-litigation and litigation defense strategy, and IP policy advocacy. He is a frequent author and speaker on software patent eligibility and post-grant proceedings, and was counsel of record and co-author of Intellectual Property Owners Association Supreme Court amicus briefs in WesternGeco v. ION Geophysical (2018), Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee (2016) and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank (2014).

Side preference. His tracked litigation record is exclusively defendant-side (1 appearance, 0 plaintiff-side), consistent with a career built on defending and counseling operating technology companies rather than asserting patents for NPEs. Before rejoining private practice, he spent roughly 17 years at Microsoft, serving as Chief Patent Counsel and Associate General Counsel and building a portfolio of more than 35,000 issued patents managed by a team of 100+ IP professionals — a portfolio-owner/builder role rather than a plaintiff-side assertion practice.

Firm context. Eppenauer was a Shook associate before joining Microsoft in 1997, and rejoined Shook in 2013 to open and lead its Seattle office. He remains there as Seattle managing partner (recognized in Best Lawyers for Patent Litigation and Patent Law since 2017, and in IAM Patent 1000 and the IAM Strategy 300). No other firm affiliations relevant to his patent litigation career are confirmed beyond Shook and his in-house tenure at Microsoft.

Notable tracked case. The one tracked matter is Wapp Tech Limited Partnership et al. v. Bank of America Corporation (E.D. Tex.), where Eppenauer is listed as lead counsel for Bank of America. It was one of several "customer suits" in Wapp's mobile-app performance-testing campaign (asserting patents such as Nos. 8,924,192, 9,298,864 and 9,971,678); the court stayed the bank cases pending the parallel Micro Focus manufacturer suit, in which a jury found willful infringement. That case resolved through a global settlement, and Wapp's claims against Bank of America were dismissed with prejudice in 2021. These are defendant-side litigation-defense engagements, not verdicts won by Eppenauer.

PTAB / IPR. Public sources show substantial engagement with PTAB/IPR issues as a policy commentator and industry voice (e.g., writing and speaking on the Cuozzo claim-construction standard and on IPR volume trends), but available data does not show him as a regularly appearing IPR/PGR practitioner of record; no IPR filings listing him as counsel were confirmed. This should be treated as policy/commentary experience rather than a documented PTAB docket.

Bar / education (limited sourcing). J.D., University of Iowa, 1990 (per Best Lawyers); registered U.S. patent attorney (USPTO Reg. No. 35499). Specific state bar admissions were not independently verified.