Sharona H. Sternberg

I'll research this attorney's background before drafting the summary.

Let me dig into the tracked case, her IPR/PTAB work, and the Ingenico trial result.

Specialty / focus areas. Sternberg's patent work has centered on consumer payment and point-of-sale technology, medical devices, and network/software security. Her most prominent matters include the long-running IOENGINE flash-drive/NFC patent dispute on behalf of payment-terminal maker Ingenico (USB device and terminal-peripheral technology) and MED-EL's cochlear-implant patent litigation against Advanced Bionics/Sonova (implantable electrode arrays, fitting/stimulation parameters, housing seals). The single tracked case here — Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc. (W.D. Mo.), where she appeared pro hac vice for the defendant bank — involved patents on electronic-transaction security infrastructure and online-banking certificate management. Public descriptions of her practice also list software, trade secrets, and design/creative-arts clients, and she maintains a separate trademark prosecution and TTAB practice (e.g., representing Vertex Pharmaceuticals in a TTAB opposition, and PopOnSmiles in a cancellation).

Side preference. On the tracked docket she is 1-for-1 on the defendant side, and her verifiable patent work skews to defense and petitioner-side challenges: she was pro hac vice counsel for petitioner Ingenico in IPR2019-00584, and for the Ingenico declaratory-judgment defense against IOENGINE. She has also appeared for patent owners/plaintiffs — pro hac vice for MED-EL as plaintiff in its D. Del. suit against Advanced Bionics, and on the brief in Exergen Corp. v. TherMomedics (Fed. Cir. 16-1099). Net: predominantly defense-leaning, but she works both sides rather than a pure NPE/PAE prosecution practice.

Firm context. She is currently at Mintz (Boston), where her role is described as leading firm knowledge-management and innovation initiatives (workflow, data, and generative-AI integration) built on her IP-litigation background; Mintz's 2026 WTR 1000 listing still credits her trademark prosecution/strategy practice. Before Mintz she was at Sunstein LLP (Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP), Boston, where she made partner in 2020 and spent the bulk of her patent-litigation career.

Notable cases / outcomes. Beyond the tracked IV v. Commerce matter, the headline result is Ingenico Inc. v. IOENGINE, LLC: Ingenico's IPR petitions invalidated most asserted claims at the PTAB, and a 2022 Delaware jury verdict of invalidity was affirmed by the Federal Circuit on May 7, 2025, in a decision that narrowed IPR estoppel by distinguishing a "ground" from the underlying prior art. Note that Sunstein's public announcement names Kerry L. Timbers and Kevin R. Mosier as the trial team, while Sternberg described her own part in "a sweeping patent trial victory for our client Ingenico" in a Boston Bar Association interview — so her specific trial role is stated by her, not by the firm release. In the IV v. Commerce litigation, the district court stayed and then dismissed the case pending IPR; the parallel bank IPRs (Compass Bank/Commerce/First National Bank of Omaha) ended with the PTAB holding all asserted claims of the challenged patents unpatentable, with the Federal Circuit affirming in the appeals IV elected to pursue.

PTAB / IPR. Yes — she appears as pro hac vice counsel in IPR proceedings as a matter of course, including IPR2019-00584 and related IOENGINE petitions filed by Ingenico, and the MED-EL IPRs against Advanced Bionics/Sonova patents. Treat this as a genuine area of experience rather than occasional.

Bar / education. J.D., Harvard Law School; B.A., summa cum laude, Barnard College, Columbia University. Admitted roughly 14 years as of her most recent profile listing; Massachusetts-based.

Caveats: the tracked-appearance set is a single case, so the practice portrait above rests largely on firm bios, court/PTAB filings, and one bar-association interview. Names in some dockets appear as "Sharona S. Sternberg," apparently the same attorney — I found no evidence of a second Boston IP attorney by this name, but the records are not fully consistent.