Kurt Pankratz

Practice Areas

Broad trial skills with particular emphasis on high-tech patent and trade secret litigation in both federal and state courts.

Career

Kurt is a first-chair trial lawyer with decades of experience and a track record of wins in high-stakes patent and trade secret disputes. He has won trials around the country, with verdicts totaling well over $1 billion in favor of his clients. Kurt’s recent successes include a $210 million trade secret verdict against a competitor (the largest trade secret verdict of 2023), an almost $300 million verdict for a patent owner, an ITC exclusion order against several competitors (leading to a $75 million settlement in addition to other, confidential settlements), and a directed verdict for a defendant wiping out billions of dollars of exposure.

Kurt regularly handles cases in both federal and state courts and particularly enjoys cases that involve high-tech issues, where he can bring to bear his early experience and background in technology. Prior to his legal career, Kurt cut his teeth as an engineer working on classified government projects involving high-security networks, signals intelligence, and technology to enable creation and modification of secure physical documents.

Kurt’s experience in industry and underlying engineering skills, coupled with his decades of legal experience, give him a unique perspective that helps him take complex issues and make them accessible and understandable. As one of Kurt’s clients explained: he "handles himself very well on his feet in court and has the ability to explain intricate details to a lay person."

While Kurt approaches every case with an eye towards winning at trial, he excels at creative, early-stage solutions. He has negotiated deals on behalf of clients – both for intellectual property rights holders and defendants – for amounts totaling more than even the verdicts that he has achieved.

In addition to his busy trial docket, Kurt serves as an official and unofficial mentor to young attorneys and serves as Chair of the Dallas IP Department for Baker Botts, leading a group of dozens of IP attorneys.

Kurt received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Texas School of Law; and his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering, cum laude, from Texas A&M University.

Professional Memberships

State Bar of Texas; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, and the District of Colorado; US Patent and Trademark Office.