2023 Intellectual Property Program
Panelist Bios

Judge Beth Labson Freeman
U.S. District Judge, Northern District of California

Judge Beth Labson Freeman is a Judge on the Federal Court in the Northern District of California, appointed by President Obama in 2014. Judge Freeman sits in the San Jose Division, hearing a broad array of cases including antitrust, civil rights, consumer class actions, commercial litigation and technology cases including patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret cases. She serves on the Northern District’s patent local rules and jury instruction committees. Judge Freeman previously was a Superior Court Judge in San Mateo County, California from 2001 to 2014. Judge Freeman served as Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge of the San Mateo Court.

Prior to her appointment to the bench in 2001, Judge Freeman was deputy county counsel in San Mateo County, and an associate attorney at Lasky, Haas and Cohler in San Francisco and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson in Washington, D.C. Judge Freeman is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and University of California, Berkeley.

Renny Hwang
Director of Litigation, Google

Renny is a Senior Legal Director and Head of Litigation for Google. His team is responsible for a global docket of antitrust, commercial, constitutional, consumer protection, content, intellectual property, privacy and other litigation matters. Previously Mr. Hwang practiced IP litigation in Los Angeles at a global law firm. He also has experience in product management and software development, leading product and engineering teams in building Internet software technologies. Mr. Hwang received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Engineering Management from Stanford University.

Khari Tillery
Partner, Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP

Khari Tillery has extensive experience litigating complex commercial matters, including bet-the-company trade secret disputes and enforcing or untangling sophisticated contracts. Most recently Khari led a team that obtained a rare JMOL mid-trial, beating back a $450 million trade secret and employee mobility claim against his client a biotech SaaS company. Representing both plaintiffs and defendants, Khari has tried cases in state and federal courts nationwide as well as private arbitrations for clients that span a broad range of industries, including commercial real estate, artificial intelligence, cloud software, and building services.

Patricia Young
Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP

Patricia Young represents market-leading companies in intellectual property litigation, particularly high-stakes, complex, multi-patent, and multi-jurisdictional cases. Ms. Young litigates patent and trade secrets cases for defendants and plaintiffs, regularly trying cases across the country, including in state and federal courts, and before the ITC. Ms. Young has developed an impressive record of leading complex, multi-product, multi-claim disputes. Her experience spans industries from semiconductors, RF power, memory, microprocessors, file system and storage software and hardware, networking, gaming, e-commerce, telecommunications, UV LEDs, biotech, biologics, protein engineering, sequencing technology, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals to consumer products. She is also a collaborator on the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide, the Federal Judicial Center’s definitive patent litigation how-to guide for federal judges, now in its third edition.

Moderator: Josh Lerner
Partner, WilmerHale LLP

Josh Lerner has served as counsel in some of the largest trade secret cases in the country. He has brought and defended cases involving business torts, and has handled significant hardware and software related class actions. He also relies on years of in-house experience in litigating large contract disputes.