Sean S. Pak

I'll research this attorney before drafting.

Sean S. Pak — Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP (San Francisco)

Focus areas. Pak's practice is concentrated in high-stakes technology patent litigation with an electrical engineering/computer science core: cellular and Wi-Fi standards (the Evolved Wireless 4G handover case; the Massively Broadband 5G relay, smart-antenna and network-monitoring patents; Telcom Ventures and Cobblestone Wireless), consumer electronics and smartphone/tablet products, smart-speaker and audio technology (Sonos v. Google), semiconductors and memory (Advanced Memory Technologies v. SK Hynix; Mianyang BOE v. Samsung Display), MEMS sensors (STMicroelectronics v. InvenSense), broadband satellites (ViaSat v. Space Systems/Loral), and medical devices (Varian v. Elekta). Chambers describes him as handling patents, trade secrets and copyrights across a "wide variety of IP disputes," and he is a founding member of Quinn Emanuel's AI practice group.

Side preference. Overwhelmingly defense-side. The tracked docket is 28 defendant appearances against 7 plaintiff-side, and the pattern is consistent: he is a go-to defense counsel for operating companies—principally Samsung, plus Google, MediaTek, Symantec, HTC and Alcatel-Lucent—against NPE/PAE and competitor assertions. His plaintiff work is selective and typically brought by operating companies rather than assertion vehicles: ViaSat, GoPro (against Insta360), STMicroelectronics, Veritas/Symantec, and the declaratory-judgment actions Samsung filed against asserted patents (Telcom Ventures, Massively Broadband).

Firm and background. He has been a partner at Quinn Emanuel since 2009 and is co-chair of its national IP litigation practice and co-managing partner of the San Francisco office. Before that he was a litigator at Latham & Watkins (2002–2009), and prior to law school worked as an engineer at Intel and at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is also a director of ViaSat, Inc. (since 2018; lead independent director since 2019), which is a corporate role rather than an in-house position. California Bar No. 219032 (admitted 2002); J.D. cum laude, Harvard Law School; B.S. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT; admitted to the Federal Circuit and the Central and Southern Districts of California. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and is Chambers-ranked in patent litigation and ITC/Section 337.

Notable matters. Reported results include a complete defense jury verdict for Samsung in Evolved Wireless LLC v. Samsung Electronics (E.D. Tex. 2023, ~$50M sought, cellular handover patents); a defense win for Google in Sonos, Inc. v. Google LLC (N.D. Cal.), where post-trial briefing overturned a $32.5M jury award—though the Federal Circuit's August 28, 2025 decision was reversed-in-part and affirmed-in-part, reviving certain Sonos claims, so that result should be described as mixed on appeal rather than final; a $283M jury verdict for plaintiff ViaSat against Space Systems/Loral (S.D. Cal. 2014); an ITC win and favorable global settlement for Varian against Elekta; and a Symantec defense verdict defeating a claim exceeding $1B. His ITC experience includes Apple's 337-TA-710 (HTC), Rambus's 337-TA-753 (NVIDIA, STMicroelectronics, MediaTek, Cisco, Motorola), and MediaTek matters that resolved in cross-licenses after trial. Current tracked matters are dominated by the Samsung NPE docket (VB Assets, Massively Broadband, Cobblestone Wireless, Telcom Ventures).

PTAB/IPR. His PTAB presence is real but typically supporting rather than front-line: he has appeared pro hac vice in IPRs on behalf of patent owners (e.g., Apple v. AliveCor, IPR2021-00970) and as back-up counsel on petitioner-side filings (Samsung v. Vasu Holdings, IPR2025-00450). The Samsung NPE defenses he leads are routinely paired with parallel IPR petitions filed by Quinn Emanuel (Samsung v. Massively Broadband, IPR2026-00032 and -00086), so he operates in a district-court-plus-IPR posture even where the petition itself lists another attorney as lead. Published reporting does not identify him as a first-chair PTAB advocate.