Jessica R. Bernhardt

Jessica joined Bartlit Beck in 2022 following two federal clerkships. Jess represents clients in a wide variety of complex, high-stakes disputes, including intellectual property litigation, breach-of-contract actions, and personal injury matters. Jess’s experience includes strategizing for and negotiating document discovery, preparing fact and expert witnesses, taking and defending depositions, and drafting and arguing motions to the court.

Before coming to the firm, Jess clerked for the Honorable Joel M. Flaum on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for the Honorable John Z. Lee on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She earned her law degree at Columbia Law School, where she was an Articles Editor on the Columbia Law Review, and earned her undergraduate degrees from Loyola University of Chicago.

Representative Matters

Zentian, Ltd. v. Apple, Inc.; Zentian, Ltd. v. Amazon.com, Inc. (W.D. Tex.)
Trial counsel for Zentian in patent infringement actions regarding hardware speech recognition systems and architecture developed in the early 2000s. These technologies facilitate on-device speech recognition functions, including the “always on” wake word/phrase, dictation of text messages and notes, and/or speech recognition for Alexa and/or Siri user requests. Cases are currently pending.

Lionra v. Cisco, Lionra v. Palo Alto Networks, Lionra v. Fortinet (E.D. Tex.)
Trial counsel for plaintiff in three related cases asserting infringement of patents relating to computer network security.  Argued at pretrial conference.  Each of the three cases settled before trial.

BBP Holdco, et al v. Brunswick Corp. (Del. Superior Court)
Trial counsel for Brunswick in a case brought by the purchasers of one of Brunswick’s former businesses.  Plaintiffs assert claims for breach of contract, among others, and Brunswick denies those claims.  Trial is set for January 2025.

Pearson Family Foundation v. The University of Chicago (N.D. Okla.)
Trial counsel for The University of Chicago in dispute arising from $100 million grant agreement. Case currently pending.

ET Plus Litigation
National counsel for defendants, Trinity Industries and Valtir, in litigation alleging personal injuries from Trinity’s ET Plus guardrail end terminal system.