Prior BigLaw and In-house Experience
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Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP
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Digital Convergence, Inc.
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SoftLayer Technologies, Inc.
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Appspace, Inc.
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NASA (Langley) as an aeronautical engineer
Education
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Angelo State University, B.S. in Physics, magna cum laude
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George Washington University, M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering
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Baylor University School of Law
Licenses
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Admitted to practice law in Texas and the United States Patent and Trademark Office
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Admitted to practice in the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Eastern, Western, Southern Districts of Texas and the Federal Circuit
Practice Areas
My Story
Suzy Fulton is a co-founder and co-manager of Fulton Jeang PLLC. She was previously a co-founder of Grable Martin Fulton PLLC. She served in the role of VP, Operations and General Counsel for Appspace, Inc., an international enterprise business communication technology company, and General Counsel for SoftLayer Technologies, Inc., which at the time was the largest private hosting company in the world until it was purchased by IBM in 2013 (after her departure from SoftLayer).
In her role as legal counsel, she concentrates on technology transactions, such as Software-as-a Service (SaaS) or cloud agreements, software licensing, data privacy, including advising on GDPR matters, and cybersecurity.
She also advises on areas ranging from general corporate and business planning to protecting intellectual property assets (including trademark and copyright filings), managing issues related to employee benefits, executive compensation, commercial real estate transactions, and overseeing litigation as it arises.
Suzy was previously named the Dallas Business Journal’s Best Corporate Counsel in the “Heavy Hitter” category and has been selected by her peers as a D Magazine Best Lawyers in Dallas for Technology Transactions. In recognition of her work in intellectual property law, Suzy was awarded the Lisa Evert Award of Excellence from the Honorable Barbara M.G. Lynn American Inn of Court in 2021.
Outside of the office, Suzy serves as general counsel and community adviser to the DFW chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, a national organization dedicated to advancing the social, political and economic well- being of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States, and she is on the Executive Committee (Treasurer) and Board of the Frontiers of Flight Museum. In a former life, she worked for NASA as an aerospace engineer.
As a former General Counsel, Suzy is a jack-of-all trades, but her primary practice areas are technology law, cloud computing contracts and issues, data privacy and cybersecurity and all things intellectual property related (except for patent prosecution). Although she is licensed to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, she discovered that patent prosecution had the tendency to make her doze off, so she sticks with trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, licensing, patent protection advice, etc., but leaves the patent prosecution to others.
Suzy is a native Texan, but as an Air Force brat, she moved around some until her dad, who had traveled the world, decided that of all of the places in the world, San Angelo, Texas was the place to retire. She was there from 4th grade through undergrad and considers San Angelo to be “where she is from.”
She never meant to be a lawyer and started off with a Physics degree in undergraduate and then got accepted into a master’s degree program that was a joint one between George Washington University and NASA, Langley in Hampton, Virginia. Her master’s thesis involved a supersonic wind tunnel test of a generic missile configuration where the angle-of-attack and sweep of the wings was changed. After completing her degree in aeronautical engineering, she started working at NASA as an aeronautical engineer, where she was surrounded by truly brilliant people –it actually was rocket science! Suzy started on her Ph.D. at University of Texas at Austin while still working for NASA but turned to law after NASA reorganized and her group got their supersonic wind tunnel taken away from them and were moved into a group that had a more theoretical focus.
Suzy came back to Texas and went to law school at Baylor. After graduating, she accepted a position at Gardere & Wynne (now known as Foley & Lardner LLP). Following Gardere, she received a broad range of experience working for a patent boutique, a dot-com startup and a med-mal defense firm.
She served as General Counsel at, what was at the time the largest private hosting company in the world, SoftLayer Technologies, Inc. In her role as General Counsel, Suzy started the legal department and had global responsibility for the company’s legal needs, ranging from general corporate and business planning to compliance and to protecting intellectual property assets, managing issues related to employee benefits, executive compensation, health and welfare plans, retirement plans, and health law, negotiating real estate leases, and overseeing litigation as it arose. She was responsible for all legal aspects related to the company’s expansion into the international markets of the Netherlands and Singapore, including immigration, corporate structure, real estate, employment issues, intellectual property protection and compliance. She also served as General Counsel for Appspace Inc., and multiple other tech companies.
Suzy is half-Japanese (although she still has not figured out which half) and has been involved in various national and local Asian bar associations. She also serves as general counsel and community adviser to the DFW chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans (yes, Chinese –she is not Chinese. It’s a long story), a national organization dedicated to advancing the social, political and economic well-being of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States. Suzy was named selected by her peers as one of D Magazine’s Best Lawyers in Dallas for Technology Transactions and as one of the Dallas Business Journal’s Best Corporate Counsel, and was a finalist for the prestigious Magna Stella Award, which honors outstanding in-house counsel.
She is married to Joe, who was in the same master’s degree program, but they did not get married until 13 years after they met (again, another long story). She has two children, Kyle and Katie. (Note to opposing counsel: her children seem to be the only people on earth who have been able to make her crack and drive her insane, and for the very low price of college tuition, they will be happy to share their secrets). The family also includes two cats, Limerick, aka Ricky, and Tipper. Tipper has unfortunately decimated the lizard population in their backyard.
Send your inquiries to Suzy @ sfulton[at]fultonjeang.com