Sara Edelstein has a decade of experience in complex commercial and intellectual property disputes. Litigating a range of cases from patent infringement and trade secrets to false advertising and real estate contract matters, her experience also spans industries, including pharmaceutical, technology, industrial, and manufacturing, among others.

Sara excels at crafting creative and persuasive arguments for judges and juries. Her analytical skills, combined with her research and writing talents, enable her to critically examine and pinpoint key issues to achieve effective solutions for clients.

Prior to joining RJLF, Sara was an attorney at McKool Smith where she focused on intellectual property and commercial litigation. Sara also clerked for the Honorable Rosemary S. Pooler in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was a Yale Law School Public Interest Fellow at the Santa Clara County Office of the Public Defender.

Sara earned her J.D. from Yale Law School also served as a member of the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, the Complex Federal Litigation Clinic, and the Yale Human Rights and International Development Journal. In recognition for her clinical work, Sara was awarded the Charles G. Albom Prize for excellence in appellate advocacy in a law school clinical program.

Representative matters

• Representing Arconic (f/k/a Alcoa), a Fortune 500 company pioneering aluminum products and technologies worldwide, in a trade secret dispute pending in the Northern District of Georgia involving proprietary aluminum aerospace parts that form the skeleton of airplane wings.  The case involves hundreds of millions of dollars in dispute based on allegations of willful misappropriation of critical aircraft wing components. The representation includes defense of antitrust counterclaims. Arconic prevailed on summary judgment after five years of hard-fought litigation, and the case is set to be tried before a jury. 

• Representing Arconic in multi-hundred million dollar trade secret and antitrust case pending in the Western District of Pennsylvania. The case involves claims that Novelis intentionally published Arconic’s trade secrets in a pretreatment process, used for aluminum alloys used in Ford’s popular F-150 pickup truck, in order to avoid royalty obligations. Novelis has asserted counterclaims alleging breach of contract and violation of federal antitrust laws.

• Represented and helped secure a win for Alcoa in a several hundred million-dollar dispute against the state of North Carolina concerning ownership rights to a 45-mile stretch of riverbed and four hydroelectric dams under federal navigability doctrine and associated constitutional principles. Alcoa’s win extinguished the State’s allegations of ownership and allowed Alcoa to maintain its ownership rights.

• Represented Merial, a leading global animal healthcare company acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim, and helped win a preliminary injunction in a false advertising dispute concerning claims about active ingredient of a leading flea treatment for pets.