Sunny Kalara, PhD, Esq.

I am an IP attorney specializing in complex technology transactions, patent litigation (frequently undertaken on a contingency fee basis) and in IP portfolio management.

My other interests in the legal field include counseling emerging companies and facilitating legal process outsourcing (LPO).

IP law remain my primary interests but time permitting, in my sandbox, I tackle issues in business and science . My other diversions can be seen here . I frequently contribute to
BizOrigin - the art and science of Startups,
Sepoy Mutiny (First Rebellion) blog, and
Talk like a Physicist site among others.

You can contact me at sunny a*t kalaralaw dot com

My practice at Kalara law is focused on IP litigation and Technology transactions. A significant portion of my practice includes due-diligence for prelitigation patent infringement cases, typically performed at the request of another law firm or a VC firm interested in investing in the the companies with the IP assets.

Patent litigation is an expensive proposition. Because of the recent changes in the patent law, it has become become even more expensive and unpredictable. The only thing that differentiates between a good case and a mediocre case is the amount of “due diligence” effort expended on it.

My Professional Bio:

Sunny Kalara is an IP attorney specializing in complex technology transactions, enforcement of patent rights and monetization of intellectual property assets. He has extensive experience in IP litigation, patent licensing and strategic IP portfolio management. His firm, Kalara Law Firm, undertakes select patent litigation cases on a contingency fee basis. Sunny’s practice includes due diligence for pre-litigation and pre-investment IP-centric assets.

Sunny has significant experience in the area of legal process outsourcing. He has worked on several pilot projects involving IP law, toxic tort litigation and M&A activities. He has counseled VC and angel investors on the opportunities and obstacles related to legal process outsourcing businesses.

Prior to founding the Kalara Law Firm, Sunny was with the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, where his practice was focused on patent litigation, IP counseling and e-discovery management.

Previously, Sunny served as the General Counsel to Dreamtime Holdings, a multimedia company charged with monetizing NASA’s multimedia assets. He led the negotiations to forge an unprecedented partnership between NASA and the private sector for the purpose of commercializing NASA’s IP assets.

As a business partner and general counsel to an incubator venture fund in Silicon Valley, Sunny assisted several startup companies with fund raising and provided legal advice on general corporate matters.

He has extensive experience with due-diligence for startup companies, and continues to work with emerging companies on IP protection and on venture funding issues.

In 1999, he co-founded Zenncomm Communication, a cutting edge communication venture, where the company acquired operating rights to a $280M communication satellite. During his tenure as the president and CEO, he effectuated ground breaking partnership agreements with Hughes, Boeing and NASA.

Prior to that, Sunny was with the law firm of Vinson & Elkins in Houston, where his practice focused on patent litigation, and complex software development and implementation agreement. He was one of the original members of the Internet practice group and negotiated several significant outsourcing deals and digital media transactions involving online advertisement and content distribution.

Sunny holds a Ph.D. in Physics, and has authored a book on the physics of Black Holes. He worked with Stephen Hawking and other luminaries during his academic career and also taught at Texas A&M for several years.

Sunny possesses extensive legal and technical expertise in the fields of software, digital media, communications and electronic hardware. He frequently writes about IP related issues for emerging companies and on the legal outsourcing matters.

We are in the process of changing and consolidating our offices, so best way to reach me would be by email.

This is a golden time to be a physicist! For the first time ever, one can actually ask the questions like “what was it like before the Big-Bang?”

I also edited/wrote a book on Blackholes titled Blackholes, Membranes, Wormholes and Superstrings: International Symposium (Hardcover) World Scientific Pub Co Inc (September 1993) by S. Kalara (Author) Amazon Link. It is out of print, so you can only buy a used copy.

Another thing that brings me great deal of delight is the “first light” of a new telescope. I make it a point to write about it in my blog at http://www.sunnykalara.com/blog. Appropriately, the blog is called Dark Matter.

Other science themed topics that I find fascinating include Evolutionary Psychology - why do we think and feel the way we do; antique machinery - left to my own devices, can I really “make” something?; solving Fermi Problems - if something has a quantitative answer, one should be able to guesstimate it by doing a back of the envelope calculation.

Over the years, I have written over 50 papers in physics. A sample list of my publications is here:

A short list of my papers:

Calculable nonrenormalizable terms in string theory: A guide for the practitioner
S Kalara, JL Lopez, DV Nanopoulos - Nuclear Physics B, 1991 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Smithsonian/NASA ADS Physics Abstract Service. Title: Calculable
nonrenormalizable terms in string theory: A guide for the practitioner.
Authors: Kalara, S.; Lopez, Jorge L.; Nanopoulos, D. V. Affiliation …
Cited by 113 - Related Articles - Web Search

Nonrenormalizable terms in the free fermionic formulation of 4D strings -
S Kalara, JL Lopez, DV Nanopoulos - Physics Letters B, 1990 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Smithsonian/NASA ADS Physics Abstract Service. Title: Nonrenormalizable
terms in the free fermionic formulation of 4D strings. Authors: Kalara,
S.; Lopez, Jorge L.; Nanopoulos, D. V. Affiliation …
Cited by 77 - Related Articles - Web Search

Threshold corrections and modular invariance in free fermionic strings -

S Kalara, JL Lopez, DV Nanopoulos - Physics Letters B, 1991 -
adsabs.harvard.edu
Smithsonian/NASA ADS Physics Abstract Service. Title: Threshold corrections and modular invariance in free fermionic strings. Authors: Kalara, S.; Lopez, J. L.; Nanopoulos, D. V. Publication: Physics …
Cited by 74 - Related Articles - Web Search

Density-dependent couplings and astrophysical bounds on light scalar particles
J Ellis, S Kalara, KA Olive, C Wetterich - Physics Letters B, 1989 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Title: Density-dependent couplings and astrophysical bounds on light scalar particles. …
Cited by 54 - Related Articles - Web Search

Theories of inflation and conformal transformation
S Kalara, N Kaloper, KA Olive - Nuclear Physics B, 1990 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Smithsonian/NASA ADS Physics Abstract Service. Title: Theories of inflation
and conformal transformation. Authors: Kalara, Sunil; Kaloper, Nemanja;
Olive, Keith A. Affiliation: Center for Theoretical …
Cited by 53 - Related Articles - Web Search

A. Olive, and C. Wetterich
J Ellis, S Kalara - Phys. Lett. B, 1989
Cited by 51 - Related Articles - Web Search

Yukawa couplings and phenomenology of a three-generation superstring model -
S Kalara, RN Mohapatra - Physical Review D, 1987 - APS
Armed with the explicitly calculated Yukawa couplings and knowledge of discrete
symmetries we discuss the phenomenology of the three-generation superstring
model suggested by Yau. We consider the possibility of CP violation induced …
Cited by 34 - Related Articles - Web Search

Difficulties for field theoretical inflation in string models -
S Kalara, KA Olive - Physics Letters B, 1989 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Smithsonian/NASA ADS Physics Abstract Service. Title: Difficulties for
field theoretical inflation in string models. Authors: Kalara, Sunil; Olive,
Keith A. Affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy …
Cited by 32 - Related Articles - Web Search

Gravitational equations of motion at the string scale
S Kalara, C Kounnas, KA Olive - Physics Letters B, 1988 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Title: Gravitational equations of motion at the string scale. …
Cited by 26 - Related Articles - Web Search

String duality and black holes
S Kalara, DV Nanopoulos - Physics Letters B, 1991 - adsabs.harvard.edu
Title: String duality and black holes. …
Cited by 25 - Related Articles - Web Search

You can read my current views and musings about the business scene at Art and Science of Startups: Bizorigin.com.

Other forays that I have had in to the business world include:

(i) Sr. VP and General Counsel, Dreamtime Holdings. Rewind to 1999; Dreamtime had a great plan - work with NASA and monetize all the traffic going to NASA websites and other multimedia content. The plan was that Dreamtime was to donate about $100M worth of equipment to NASA in return for semi-exclusive rights to use NASA’s multimedia content. I led the negotiations with NASA carve out the IP rights of Dreamtime. The idea was to provide HD equipment to NASA and then all HD content will become the exclusive property of Dreamtime for 5-10 years, however low resolution feed will be provided free to general public. The agreement with NASA was unprecedented because it envisioned offering equity in Dreamtime to NASA - something that required congressional approval.

(ii) Partner, Invisible Studios, LLP. Invisible studio was an incubator fund. There were about six companies at different level of gestation. The portfolio included ready2build.com ( a portal for construction industry) GoYogi.com (a portal for India - Excite/Chello was interested in acquiring this portal), Protozoa ( a 3D animator suite, which had seen some success in Doonsbury and a cursing Nurse 3D characters) and several others.

(iii) President, Zenncomm. A satellite company. A communication satellite, Orion 3, was launched by Boeing, and the rocket misfired. the satellite got stuck in the low earth orbit. The insurance company paid off $280M for the satellite. We purchased the salvage rights to the satellite from the insurance company and our plan was to slap a booster on the satellite and send it to its intended geosynchronous orbit. We even considered using Columbia shuttle to do a dedicated mission to rescue this satellite. The project was moving forward nicely and then 9/11 happened and the NASA was in no mood of taking any extra risks. In December of 2001 we abandoned the project. The satellite is still making its rounds at 1000 miles by 700 miles orbit and with the right equipment, one can actually see it at 4.00 AM over Los Angeles.

I joke that I have been on all six side of the table in a business/investment negations, as an entrepreneur, as an investor, as a counsel, as an officer of a company receiving the investment, as a counsel representing interests of previous investors, and as a buyer and seller of a company.

Here are some of my notable diversions:

(A) 1857 Mutiny Blog. In 1857, Indians rose agains the British rule. Initially it was termed as “Sepoy Mutiny” but soon it became a populist uprising. I am participating in an exercise in alternate media by writing a blog about the mutiny as if it was happening today.

The blog pulls together varied sources of multimedia content related to the 1857 uprising. It is one of the most illustrated account of 1857 uprising.

(B) Cartography. I am an avid collector of antique maps, generally of India. I think I have one of the better private collections of antique Indian maps. The maps that I have range from 1550’s Ptolemy maps to the maps from 1850’s. Some of the significant maps that I have include Renel Map of 1742 of Berar, and detailed city maps of Delhi and Bombay (now Mumbai) from 1850’s. One would not have expected it, but detailed Indian city maps from 1800’s or prior are very difficult to find. I expect to showcase some of my maps very soon.

(C) Fonts. Fonts are unique communication tools. Several years ago, we started a software company that made fonts for Indian language. I designed the font so that it would be easy to use by a person who is familiar with the QWERT keyboard. IN my spare time, I work on some of the new distinctive fonts. I recently completed a couple of fonts called Uber-1eet and malayinglish. Stay tuned for the availability.

(D) Talk like a Physicist. Inspired from the Talk like a Pirate Day (September 19), some of us discussed a day called “Talk like a physicist day” - and most appropriately it will be celebrated on Einstein’s birthday, which is on March 14. The preparations are underway so hone up on your physics and be ready to talk like a physicist on March 14, 2008.

(E) High school Education. I am a strong proponent of teaching new and lasting concepts at high school level. I believe that as a society we should teach the value of IP rights to students at high school level.