Patent Litigation

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Patent litigation demands lawyers who can read both the code and the claim charts. We try infringement and validity cases in federal court, the ITC, and the PTAB, turning hard technology into arguments judges and juries follow.

Patent litigation puts your most valuable technology on the line in front of judges, juries, and administrative panels who need it explained clearly. Our attorneys came up as software engineers, so we read the patents, the source code, and the prior art ourselves. That technical fluency shapes how we frame claim construction, infringement, and validity at every stage of a dispute.

Federal District Court Cases

We try patent infringement cases in federal district courts across the country, including the venues where patent dockets concentrate: the District of Delaware, the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, and the Northern District of California. From the complaint through claim construction, expert discovery, and trial, we build a record that connects the technology to the legal standard so the fact-finder can actually decide the question in front of them.

ITC Section 337 Investigations

The International Trade Commission moves fast and can block infringing imports at the border with an exclusion order. We represent complainants pursuing relief under Section 337 and respondents defending against it, managing the compressed schedule, the domestic industry requirement, and the trial before an administrative law judge without losing the technical detail that decides these cases.

PTAB Validity Challenges

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board is often the fastest, most cost-effective forum to test whether a patent should have issued at all. We file and defend inter partes reviews, post-grant reviews, and covered business method reviews, drafting petitions and patent owner responses that pair close prior-art analysis with claim construction. We coordinate PTAB strategy with parallel district court or ITC proceedings so the two fronts reinforce each other.

Frequently asked questions

Common venues include Delaware, the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, and the Northern District of California. Where a case lands matters a lot, because venues differ in timing, local procedures, and how cases tend to play out. Venue is often one of the first things both sides fight about.

Claim construction is the court's interpretation of what the patent's claim terms mean, usually decided at a Markman hearing. It matters because how a key term is defined often decides the whole case: a narrow reading can mean no infringement, a broad one can mean the patent is invalid.

At a minimum, a reasonable royalty. If you can prove them, lost profits are available too. For willful infringement, a court can enhance damages up to three times. Permanent injunctions are possible but not automatic; you have to meet a separate legal standard to get one.

IPR is a proceeding at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that challenges a patent's validity based on prior art. It's generally faster and cheaper than district court, but it's limited to certain invalidity grounds (essentially patents and printed publications), so it can't raise every defense a court can.

A federal district court case typically takes two to three years to reach trial, though it varies a lot by venue and how complex the technology is. Parallel proceedings like an IPR can shift that timeline, sometimes pausing the district court case while the PTAB sorts out validity.

It's worth seriously considering, because patent litigation is expensive and unpredictable. An early case assessment weighs the likely litigation costs, the strength of each side's position, and the business impact against what a settlement would cost. Sometimes settling early is simply the better economic decision, even with a strong case.

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