Tara C. Norgard

Specialty / practice focus. Tara C. Norgard is a Minneapolis-based IP litigator whose practice centers on high-stakes patent, trade secret, trademark, and complex commercial litigation. Her technology coverage is broad — firm and Chambers profiles list medical devices, financial systems, radiation therapy, dental treatments, glass coatings, biofuels/agribusiness, advanced materials, and consumer products. Her tracked docket skews toward standards-adjacent technology: Element Television Co., LLC v. Nokia Corp. (D. Minn., No. 0:24-cv-04269) concerned 17 asserted patents covering the H.264/H.265 video-coding standards, including standard-essential patent (SEP) and RAND-licensing claims.

Side preference. Her three tracked appearances split 2 plaintiff-side / 1 defendant-side, including both a plaintiff-side lead-counsel role and a defendant-side counsel role in the same Element Television v. Nokia matter; her verifiable district-court appearance there was for Nokia. That pattern, plus a plaintiff-side trade secret matter for ethanol producer POET (pre-trial settlement in D.S.D., per Minnesota Lawyer), indicates she works both sides rather than serving a single constituency. She has been with Carlson Caspers (formerly Carlson, Caspers, Vandenburgh & Lindquist, P.A.) for roughly two decades and currently serves as the firm's President and CEO; earlier, she practiced at Sidley Austin (2001–2004, medical device litigation) and clerked for Judge Donald P. Lay on the Eighth Circuit. She is also known for court-appointed receivership work, including as general counsel to the receiver in the $190 million Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme.

PTAB/IPR and credentials. Norgard has appeared in IPR proceedings — as back-up counsel for a patent owner in IPR2020-00127 and in the Nokia-related IPR2025-01109, which the PTAB terminated in August 2025 after the parties settled and entered a patent license agreement — but her profile is primarily district-court and appellate litigation rather than a high-volume PTAB practice. She earned a J.D. (magna cum laude, Order of the Coif) from University of Minnesota Law School (2000) and a B.A. from Marquette University (1993); she is admitted in Minnesota and Illinois, the Federal Circuit, and the Eighth Circuit.