Jacek Wnuk is a nationally recognized technology and intellectual property attorney who serves as a strategic counselor to companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, advanced hardware and other emerging technologies. Jacek is a UC Berkeley-trained electrical engineer and computer scientist and a registered patent attorney. He combines technical fluency, business judgment and a practical, solutions-oriented approach to help clients navigate difficult legal and commercial questions.

Jacek often functions as an extension of in-house legal leadership. He works directly with founders, executives, general counsel, engineers and research teams to identify what matters most, evaluate legal and competitive risk, establish priorities and develop creative, commercially workable paths forward. When a challenge crosses practice-area lines, he helps assemble and coordinate the right multidisciplinary team, providing clients with integrated advice and a clear point of contact.

Jacek serves on and helps manage the outside-counsel team for one of the world’s leading developers of foundation models and generative AI systems, where he helps shape and grow the patent portfolio for AI compute hardware and related system architectures. He also leads the day-to-day patent strategy and operations for a Fortune 200 financial technology company with a global portfolio spanning thousands of patents and applications. He has served as fractional in-house legal leadership for several clients to help maintain continuity during transition times and advance internal client product and IP strategy objectives.

Across his practice, Jacek advises emerging companies and global enterprises on aligning intellectual property with product roadmaps, competitive positioning, financing, commercialization and transactions. His experience includes patent, trademark, and trade secret strategy, technology licensing, freedom to operate, intellectual property diligence, post-grant proceedings, standard-essential patent (SEP) work, and disputes involving high-value technical assets. He has negotiated exclusive patent licenses, supported financings and acquisitions, and successfully defended core patents in USPTO ex parte reexamination proceedings.

Jacek also builds the systems behind effective legal and intellectual property functions. He develops invention-harvesting and portfolio-governance programs, leads multidisciplinary teams of attorneys and patent professionals, and creates AI-enabled workflows for patent drafting, prosecution, quality control and portfolio management.

Before entering law, Jacek conducted engineering research at UC Berkeley, collaborating with doctoral researchers on autonomous navigation systems for a self-driving Toyota RAV4 developed for the DARPA Grand Challenge. His expertise spans a wide range of technology areas, including LLMs, AI accelerator hardware, semiconductors, computer vision, video coding, optics, cryptography, blockchain, cell culture incubation, chemical assays, microfluidics, virtual and augmented reality, aerospace thrusters, wind turbines, RADAR and LIDAR, touchscreens, noise cancellation, medical devices, 3D printing, and more.

His honors include selection to the Lawdragon 500 X – The Next Generation, the American Bar Association’s “On the Rise” Top 40 Young Lawyers, election as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and repeated recognitions via Best Lawyers Ones to Watch in America and Super Lawyers Rising Stars.

Outside the office, Jacek enjoys swimming, woodworking, cooking, and improvisational theater. He also performs in the San Francisco Bay Area IP Inn of Court’s annual “Inter Partes Revue,” a musical continuing legal education program highlighting significant developments in intellectual property law.