November 12, 2014

THE RECORDER
By Patience Haggin

SAN FRANCISCO – Two patent litigation partners are switching firms. Steven Baik is joining Sidley Austin in Silicon Valley, and Shane Brun is starting at Goodwin Procter in San Francisco.

Baik is departing Reed Smith, where he worked for three years litigating patent cases in the semiconductor, power electronics and software industries. His recent clients have included Toshiba, Realtek Semiconductor Corporation, Netgear, and Gateway as well as its parent company ACER America Corporation.

Moving to Sidley will help Baik better grow his practice in Asia, he explained. Baik has clients in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, where he said Sidley has “better name recognition” than Reed Smith.

“I’m optimistic that most, if not all, of my clients will follow me along,” Baik said, though he declined to discuss specific clients.

Baik is admitted to the patent bar and has experience managing large patent portfolios, licensing patents internationally and representing clients before the International Trade Commission. He has been a partner at Wilson, Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as well as Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. He was a founding partner of the firm now known as Freitas Angell & Weinberg, where he worked for less than a year.

At his new firm, Baik will work closely with his former Orrick colleague Patricia Thayer, Sidley’s West Coast IP litigation head. He said he also looked forward to working with Li Chen, a Sidley partner in Dallas Baik met while each of them were working on separate matters for RealTek.

Brun has spent the last four-and-a-half years at K&L Gates, where he litigated patent cases on technologies including computer networking and internet security. He is admitted to the patent bar and has litigated cases before the International Trade Commission.

Before joining K&L Gates, Brun was a partner at Morrison & Foerster for seven years. He previously served as corporate counsel at digital television technology company OpenTV and NBC’s short-lived Internet portal NBCi.

Brun’s recent clients have included Beats Electronics, F5 Networks and network security company FireEye. Other clients have included Hitachi Plasma Display, Optimal Networks, and Aruba Networks.

Both partners were represented in their moves by search firm Watanabe Nason. Baik was represented by Larry Watanabe and Ken Schwartz. Brun was represented by Watanabe and Stacey Pacelli.