Catherine Porto represents clients in all facets of commercial litigation. Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Catherine served as a law clerk to Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Albert Diaz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Catherine earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School and her B.A. in liberal studies cum laude from the University of Notre Dame. During law school, she served as a full-time clinic student in Stanford's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, taught criminal law to incarcerated youth as a participant in Stanford’s StreetLaw Pro Bono project, and worked with Professors Pam Karlan and Joseph Bankman on Stanford Legal, a monthly legal news podcast. She previously served as a law clerk representing indigent defendants with Orleans Public Defenders, as a general litigation extern at the ACLU Northern California, and as a paralegal with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Appellate Section.
We represented software innovator SRS Acquiom in a trade-secrets misappropriation case against PNC Bank and two former SRS employees, alleging that the employees improperly retained SRS confidential information and used it, with PNC, to unfairly compete against SRS for online M&A payments-and-escrow business.
A Keker trial team, led by Bob Van Nest, successfully defended Real Intent, Inc. in a San Jose federal court, achieving a favorable outcome in a complex breach of contract case. After securing a decisive copyright fair use ruling in August 2024, they convinced the jury to award only nominal damages, far less than the claimant’s demands. Read more
Keker, Van Nest & Peters team – Laurie Carr Mims, Ben Rothstein, Candice Mai Khanh Nguyen, Melissa Cornell, and Catherine Porto – were featured by AmLaw for successfully securing a significant victory for their client InterMune against the company’s former CEO W. Scott Harkonen. Read more
Katie Lynn Joyce and Catherine Porto discuss ways to build a strong trade secret damages model with Reuters Legal News. Read more