Emily Karlberg is counsel in Ropes & Gray’s intellectual property transactions group. She focuses her practice on complex intellectual property, technology and data privacy issues in connection with mergers and acquisitions, business divisions, spinoffs, carve-out transactions, divestitures, joint ventures, and commercial and licensing agreements.
Valued for her pragmatic and commercial approach, Emily has extensive experience structuring, drafting and negotiating a wide range of strategic partnerships, including cross-border transactions, joint ventures, partnering arrangements, strategic alliances and other collaborations. An important part of her practice involves counseling emerging growth clients on IP and technology issues arising from entity formation, corporate partnerships and integrations, and the development and commercialization of key technology and products.
Emily works with clients at all stages of the business cycle and in a range of industries, including software, fintech, health care, digital health, media, educational technology and security. She also represents private equity investors and private equity-backed acquirors in structuring and negotiating acquisitions and investments.
Prior to joining Ropes & Gray, Emily practiced at international law firms in San Francisco and New York.
Experience
Mergers, Acquisitions and Investments
Private Equity: Represented PE investors and PE-backed acquirors in structuring and negotiating acquisitions and investments in a variety of technology sectors, including software, edtech, digital health, fintech, and security. Representative deals include:
- Represented TPG Capital in its acquisition of ClaimsXten, Change Healthcare’s claims payment and editing business, from UnitedHealth Group for $2.2 billion.
- Represented H.I.G. Capital in the structuring and acquisition of Avient Corporation's distribution business and the re-branding of the divested business for $950 million.
- Represented Bain Capital in the acquisition of the scientific solutions and microscope business of Olympus Corporation.
- Advised Silver Lake and its portfolio company Weld North Education in its acquisition of Winsor Learning, a producer of supplemental literacy products.
- Advised Charlesbank Capital Partners in its acquisition of Titan Cloud Software, a leading software platform providing environmental and operational solutions for convenience stores, fuel carriers, and service providers.
- Advised GI Partners in its acquisitions of GTY Technology Holdings Inc., a cloud-based technology services provider.
- Advised Gauge Capital in its investment in Streamline Healthcare Solutions, a provider of electronic health record software primarily serving behavioral health providers and state and local departments of health.
- Advised TSG Consumer Partners:
- and its portfolio company Super Star Car Wash in its acquisition of Wave Wash, a car wash operator
- in a significant minority investment in The Wrench Group, a leading provider of residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical services
- in its acquisition of a majority stake in Radiance Holdings, a beauty, wellness and self-care platform and franchise.
- Advised Azul Systems, a Java software vendor, in sale to Vitruvian Partners.*
- Advised Kofile Technologies, a government IT provider, in sale to Audax.*
Strategic Mergers and Acquisitions: Advised strategic acquirers and target emerging growth and venture-backed companies as lead outside IP counsel on hundreds of mergers and acquisitions and related integration matters, spanning various industries. Representative deals include:
- Advised Chargepoint, an EV charging infrastructure provider, in its SPAC transaction with Switchback Energy Acquisition Corporation.*
- Advised Coupa Software on various acquisitions of software targets, including its $1.5 billion acquisition of Llamasoft, a supply-chain management provider and its acquisition of ConnXus, a supplier diversity management company.*
- Advised Kenna Security, Inc., a vulnerability management software provider, in its sale to Cisco Systems, Inc.*
- Advised Arctic Wolf Networks in its acquisition of Rank Software, a cybersecurity analytics platform.*
- Advised Hims & Hers Health, Inc. in its acquisition of YoDerm, Inc., an online pharmaceutical company.*
- Advised GIPHY and CTRL-Labs in acquisitions by Facebook (Meta).*
- Advised CrowdTwist, a customer loyalty brand startup, and Moat, Inc., a digital ad tracking company, in sales to Oracle.*
- Advised Npm, Inc., a JavaScript developer, and Semmle, Inc., a software engineering analytics company, in sales to GitHub/Microsoft.*
- Advised a software and data aggregator company in its strategic sale to Google.*
- Advised Managed by Q, an office management platform, and Conductor, a search engine optimization platform, in sales to WeWork.*
- Advised Souq.com, an e-commerce platform, in its sale to Amazon.*
Licensing and Commercial Transactions
Leads complex commercial and licensing agreements in the technology industry, with expertise in structuring, drafting and negotiating a wide range of strategic partnerships and transactions, including cross-border transactions, joint ventures, partnering arrangements, strategic alliances and other collaborations. Assists early-stage companies in navigating IP and commercial issues to achieve growth and commercial objectives. Advises clients on the development and commercialization of key technology and products involving software, data and services. Representative deals include:
- Represented Fidelity Investments in its joint venture with Vanguard, Alight Solutions and Retirement Clearinghouse, LLC to create a consortium of workplace retirement plan recordkeepers to offer autoportability services.
- Represents Aitia (fka GNS Healthcare), an AI company that uses drug/patient models to simulate drug or disease behaviors to identify drug candidates and targets, with commercial agreements and collaborations.
- Represented Vayu Robotics in complex license and collaboration agreements.
- Advises companies in connection with digital asset custody and on blockchain, non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrency.
- Represented TPG Capital:
- in its acquisition of ClaimsXten, Change Healthcare’s claims payment and editing business.
- and its portfolio company Wind River, a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems, in the sale of Wind River to Aptiv.
- and its portfolio company WellSky Corporation, in an add-on acquisition of Curaspan Health Group, a healthcare IT company.
- and its portfolio company WellSky Corporation, in its acquisition of Careport, a care coordination software company that connects health care providers and payers, from Allscripts.
- Represents various private equity firms and their portfolio companies on commercial transactions, licensing, and other IP issues.
*Prior to joining Ropes & Gray