Diana B. Kruze

Diana Barrett Kruze is a partner in the Intellectual Property Group, focusing on patent, trade secret, and copyright litigation. Ms. Kruze also has extensive experience with IP counseling for start-ups, licensing and patent post-grant review procedures. She represents clients in a wide range of technical disciplines including software, medical devices, nanotechnology, smartphones, user interfaces, satellite systems, and semiconductor processing and packaging.

Ms. Kruze has questioned witnesses and experts at trial; negotiated multimillion-dollar settlements and technology licenses; developed an international IP enforcement strategy for a Fortune 500 company involving lawsuits in Germany, China, Japan and the U.S.; written multiple successful motions for summary judgment in complex IP matters; saved clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in e-discovery costs; and supervised a team of approximately 100 attorneys conducting a review of more than a million documents in a two-week timeframe.

In addition to her intellectual property work, Ms. Kruze is also part of the firm’s extensive pro bono practice, focusing on LGBT rights. In February 2014, she was recognized in a front page article of the San Francisco Chronicle for her work helping to reunite a Cameroonian gay rights activist with her partner and their 10-month-old baby. Ms. Kruze also wrote portions of an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court brief, challenging the legality of Proposition 8, and she frequently represents victims of domestic violence in securing restraining orders.

Ms. Kruze was selected as one of the “Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40” in 2017 by the LGBT Bar Association. In 2016, Ms. Kruze was selected as one of the “Top 40 Attorneys Under 40” by the Daily Journal.  Also in 2016, Ms. Kruze was awarded the “A. Leon Higginbotham Fellowship” by the American Arbitration Association, and was elected as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. In 2013, she received the “Barrister of the Year Award” from the Bar Association of San Francisco. Super Lawyers has named Ms. Kruze to its “Rising Stars” list for Northern California for the past five years in a row.

Ms. Kruze is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She currently serves as a board member on the California State Bar’s Appellate Review Committee of the Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission, as well as the Barristers Board of Directors of the Bar Association of San Francisco. She is also the fundraising co-chair of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, a pro tem judge in San Francisco Superior Court, and an executive member of the BASF’s Intellectual Property Section.  In 2017, Ms. Kruze was appointed by the Mayor of San Francisco to serve on the Citizen’s Committee on Community Development, which is the advisory body charged with public oversight of approximately $30 million in HUD-based annual funding allocations and policy matters directly related to community development efforts for all of San Francisco.

Ms. Kruze clerked for Judge James Ware and externed for Judge Saundra Armstrong, both of the Northern District of California. She graduated from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in the top 5% of her class, and was elected to the Order of the Coif. While at Hastings, she was senior symposium editor for the Hastings Law Journal.