Christa Brown-Sanford

I'll research this attorney's background and patent litigation practice.

Let me verify the specific tracked cases and PTAB experience.

Christa Brown-Sanford is a Dallas-based patent litigator and the firmwide Chair of Baker Botts' Intellectual Property Department, where she also sits on the firm's Executive Committee. Her practice spans patent litigation, patent licensing, portfolio development, and prosecution, and she holds an electrical engineering degree, which underwrites a technically heavy docket. Reported technology areas include telecommunications and standard-essential patents, wireless, semiconductors, electronics, software and AI, blockchain, personal mobility, energy, automotive systems, and financial-services technology. Firm and ranking profiles (Chambers USA, IAM Patent 1000, World IP Review) describe her as working across the full patent lifecycle rather than litigation alone, with licensing and SEP/FRAND negotiation as a notable component.

Her tracked litigation appearances are uniformly defense-side: all three identified matters have her representing defendants, with no plaintiff-side appearances in the tracked set. That profile is consistent with a practice built around defending operating companies against patent-holder and licensing-entity assertions, rather than prosecuting claims for NPEs/PAEs. Her publicly described experience also includes defense of wireless-communications and financial-institution infringement suits, where firm materials reference a pre-trial summary judgment of non-infringement and an unenforceability win in one wireless matter.

Firm context is a single-firm career: she joined Baker Botts in 2004, made partner effective January 2014, served as deputy chair of the IP department (from 2018) before becoming chair, and has spent her practice at the firm. There is no in-house role or prior-firm history reflected in the sources reviewed. She is also an adjunct professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, teaching patent licensing, enforcement, and prosecution.

Notable tracked matters: Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. et al. (E.D. Tex., lead counsel for defendants) is a multi-defendant wearable-biosensor campaign against Samsung, Fossil, Oura, and OnePlus spanning smartwatch and smart-ring patents; the defendants have filed a series of parallel IPR and PGR challenges against the asserted family, though the public petition papers reviewed list other firms as petitioners' counsel of record, so her personal PTAB role is not established from those filings. Fractus, S.A. v. Verizon Connect Inc. (E.D. Tex., lead counsel for Verizon Connect/Cellco) involved Fractus' antenna patents asserted over fleet-telematics and IoT products; Fractus announced a settlement with Verizon in March 2026. Hanwha Solutions Corp. v. Maxeon Solar Pte Ltd. lists her as counsel for the defense in a solar-technology patent dispute. Separately, she has described (in a Best Lawyers interview) leading patent-portfolio work for Kiva Systems, whose acquisition by Amazon exceeded $700 million, though that is a portfolio/licensing engagement rather than a litigated outcome.

On PTAB/IPR experience, the public record reviewed is thin: her firm and ranking profiles emphasize prosecution, licensing, and district-court litigation, and I did not find reliable sources placing her personally as counsel of record in specific IPR/PGR proceedings. That should be treated as unverified rather than as a negative. Bar and education: State Bar of Texas (admitted 2004), registered before the USPTO, admitted to the Federal Circuit and the Northern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas; B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Rice University (2001); J.D., SMU Dedman School of Law (2004), cum laude and Order of the Coif.