Tessa Schwartz is a partner in the San Francisco office and co-chair of the firm's Technology Transactions Group. She advises on a range of strategic transactions, including key patent licenses and acquisitions, technology procurement agreements, and complex development, collaboration, joint ventures, and distribution deals. Ms. Schwartz also regularly advises companies on the IP aspects of their M&A transactions.
Ms. Schwartz’s recent experience includes advising Intel on the IP aspects of a string of strategic acquisitions, including Intel’s $7.7 billion acquisition of McAfee and $884 million acquisition of Wind River. She has also advised Yahoo! on a series of strategic transactions, including advising Yahoo! in connection with its acquisitions of 5to1, an online advertising alliance for media publishers, and interclick inc., an advertising technology company, the sales of the social bookmarking service Delicious and Yahoo! HotJobs, and the launching of Hortonworks to accelerate the development of Hadoop, an open-source software platform.
Ms. Schwartz's clients include telecommunications, wireless, software, hardware, consumer electronics and products, semiconductor, social media, Internet, and other companies. She also has a particular focus on the Cleantech sector (including in the solar, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other sectors) and sustainability issues and is co-chair of the firm's Cleantech practice.
Ms. Schwartz’s practice has an active counseling element. Ms. Schwartz provides clients with pre-litigation and litigation advice. She frequently advises executives and senior management on strategic business, legal, and commercial issues, including structuring of transactions, risk management, and contract compliance. She also counsels clients with respect to a wide variety of IP issues, including patent exhaustion and implied licenses, standing and standards, protection of trade secrets, and the development and distribution of open source software.
In addition to her transactional expertise, Ms. Schwartz’s litigation background includes representing clients in arbitration, and in state and federal courts in such areas as antitrust, false advertising, unfair competition, breach of contract, securities, trademark, copyright, and trade secret law. Her litigation experience includes complex, multidistrict, and class action litigation, as well as appellate advocacy.
Ms. Schwartz’s pro bono efforts have included work for The Biomimicry Institute, Goodwill, Common Sense Media, and Business for Social Responsibility, IP advice to a variety of cultural, media, and arts organizations, and other assistance for non-profits. She recently received The Wiley W. Manuel Award for Pro Bono Legal Services from the State Bar of California.
Ms. Schwartz is recommended as a leading lawyer by Chambers USA 2012, Legal 500 US 2012, and was named to the Daily Journal’s Top 20 Under 40 list in 2009.
Ms. Schwartz received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1991. In 1996, she earned her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif.