James Yoon

James Yoon is a partner and leader of the patent trial and litigation practice at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. James has more than 25 years of experience as a trial lawyer, patent litigator, counselor, and IP strategist. He has litigated over 200 patent cases and has tried numerous cases in federal courts, in state courts, and at the International Trade Commission. He has also litigated major disputes in arbitration.

James has an active strategic patent counseling practice. He has advised over 100 companies on patent related issues in a wide variety of transactions, including patent license agreements, patent purchase agreements, private equity investments, initial public offerings, and corporate mergers. As part of these transactions, James is frequently involved in risk assessments, valuations, forecasts, and analytical modeling.

In both his patent litigation and strategic counseling practices, James has been a pioneer in the use of data analytics in legal decision making, strategy development, and risk assessment. James has worked with leading data analytic firms to improve their tools and provide greater value to clients and the practice of law.

James served as a member of the committee that developed the original and the revised versions of the Model Patent Jury Instructions for the Northern District of California. James is a Lecturer-in-Law at Stanford Law School, where he is a trial advocacy instructor and teaches a course on the economic and technological forces transforming the private practice of law. He is also an adjunct professor (Lecturer-in-Law) at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he teaches a course in patent and trade secret litigation. He has published numerous scholarly and professional articles and book chapters and is a columnist on patent law and litigation for the ABTL Report of the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers (ABTL).

In 2024, James was inducted as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF), a global honorary society of attorneys, judges, law faculty, and legal scholars whose public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession. He was listed in the 2013 and 2014 editions of International Who’s Who of Patent Lawyers. From 2009 to 2021, he has been selected for inclusion in the annual list of Northern California Super Lawyers in the field of Intellectual Property Litigation. In 2006, Bay Area Lawyer Magazine named James one of the “Top Lawyers in the Bay Area” for Intellectual Property law.

James has served on numerous firm committees, including Wilson Sonsini’s Compensation, Partner Nominating, Board Nominating, Policy and Business Development, and Associate Development committees.

James is a member of the board of directors of the Palo Alto Bar Association, and a member of the High Tech Advisory Board for Santa Clara Law School. He is a former member of the board of directors and former co-chair of the Partner Committee of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Silicon Valley (APABA-SV). He is also a former member of the board of directors of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Silicon Valley Charity.

Prior to joining the firm, James served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alan C. Kay in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. He was previously an electrical engineer for General Motors Corporation, where he worked for many different operations, including the General Motors Technological Center (Warren, Michigan), Opel Motors (Russelsheim, Germany), Vauxhall Motors (Luton, England), and GM’s Cadillac Assembly Plant (Detroit, Michigan).