Felix S. Sterling

Felix S. Sterling is an in-house attorney whose patent litigation experience is characterized by defending his corporate employer against high-stakes infringement assertions. He currently serves as the Chief Legal Officer for the cybersecurity company Trend Micro, where he oversees global legal matters, including intellectual property disputes. Prior to his tenure at Trend Micro, Mr. Sterling was a vice president and AGC at VeriSign and a member of the legal team at Yahoo!. His career began in private practice as an associate in the litigation and technology transaction groups at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati.

Based on tracked cases, Mr. Sterling’s work is exclusively on the defendant side, representing an operating company against a major patent assertion entity. This defensive posture is exemplified in his single tracked case, Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Trend Micro Incorporated et al. In this significant and long-running dispute, Trend Micro, under its legal team's guidance, successfully invalidated the asserted patents-in-suit relating to email and data filtering technology. The district court found the patents ineligible and later awarded Trend Micro a portion of its attorney fees, a decision that was later addressed on appeal.

There is no public record of Mr. Sterling having an active practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

Mr. Sterling earned his J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law and is a member of the State Bar of California.