As chair of Dinsmore’s IP litigation and enforcement group, Karen Gaunt follows baseball closely, and not just how the Reds are doing.

In a feature for the 2024 Ohio Super Lawyers Magazine, Karen talks about her work with USA Baseball and the World Baseball Softball Confederation. Karen stays busy with NIL work, licensing and agreement work, athlete health and safety matters and governance while supporting global efforts to get baseball and softball back into the Summer Olympics.

An excerpt is below:

“IP lawsuits take years and years,” Gaunt says. “The longest I had was nearly six years. A partner in my group has had a case that’s been going on for well over a decade.”

Things move a bit faster with another of Gaunt’s clients: USA Baseball, the national governing body for the sport’s amateurs. Gaunt is the organization’s outside general counsel, and most of her work there is transactional. “I field anything and everything that may come up,” she says. Gaunt pulls in other lawyers at her firm for areas outside her specialty, with her knowledge of the organization adding value and context.

USA Baseball found her in 2008, when a colleague who was doing trademark work for the league recommended Gaunt to help with contracts, licensing, and cease-and-desists. “It just grew from there,” she says.

At this point, she’s assisted with everything from insurance and real estate to immigration and tax issues. “They have all sorts of general commercial-type matters that don’t really fall neatly into any box,” she says, “but I’ve been able to do for them just because I’ve worked for them for so long and have stayed connected with everything they have going on.”

Read the full feature here.