© 2012 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Gardere Wynne Sewell continues to beef up its intellectual property practice by adding Sarah M. Paxson as a partner in the firm’s Dallas office. Paxson is the fourth IP lawyer to join Gardere since September.
Paxson’s practice focuses on patent infringement, trade secret and trademark litigation. She also provides litigation avoidance services and counsels clients on licensing issues and proper development and management of intellectual property assets.
A former partner at Thompson & Knight, Paxson said she decided to move to Gardere to join her former colleague and respected patent infringement litigator Paul Storm, who joined the firm in September.
“Gardere provides an excellent platform for me to support existing clients by providing a full range of IP counseling, asset protection and dispute resolution services, as well as the opportunity to grow my own practice,” she said.
Paxson’s client base includes manufacturers, airlines, credit card processors and retailers.
One of the most important cases of Paxson’s career involved her representation of credit card processing intermediary Paymentech in federal court in a patent infringement case that resulted in a summary judgment of non-infringement. The case was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in BMC v. Paymentech, a seminal case on the theory of joint direct infringement.
Paxson said that one of the recent issues in IP practice is the increase in available inter partes administrative proceedings, such as trademark oppositions or cancellations in the trademark office and patent reexaminations.
“It will be interesting to see whether this increase in contestant patent and trademark proceedings will precipitate a move away from litigation or complement defense strategies in patent and trademark litigation,” she said.
Paxson received her J.D. from Washington University School of Law and her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Texas Christian University.
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