Alan J. Heinrich

Alan J. Heinrich is a seasoned patent litigation partner at Irell & Manella LLP, focusing his practice on intellectual property disputes. His experience spans diverse technological fields, including biotechnology, medical devices, and high-tech industries such as microprocessors, haptic technology, and mobile internet. Mr. Heinrich has demonstrated a versatile litigation practice, successfully representing both patent owners in asserting their rights and accused infringers in defending against infringement claims.

Throughout his career at Irell & Manella, which he joined as an associate in 2001 and was elected partner in 2008, Mr. Heinrich has played a lead role in numerous high-stakes patent cases. Notably, he served as co-lead trial counsel for VLSI Technology LLC in patent infringement lawsuits against Intel Corporation, securing a $2.18 billion jury award in March 2021, which resulted in a $2.3 billion final judgment, and another verdict exceeding $948 million in a separate action. He also acted as lead counsel for Citigroup Inc. in Cyberfone Systems, LLC v. Citigroup Inc., and previously represented St. Jude Medical in a case that resulted in a $27.1 million willful infringement verdict for patents related to vascular closure devices. His experience also includes representing Immersion Corp. in haptic technology disputes and BlackBerry in mobile internet patent litigation.

Mr. Heinrich possesses significant experience in Patent Office trials, including inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. He successfully represented Sloan Kettering and Juno Therapeutics before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in an IPR, where the PTAB upheld the validity of all challenged patent claims, a decision later affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

He earned his J.D., summa cum laude, from Loyola Law School in 2000, where he was valedictorian and chief articles editor of the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. He also holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo (1996) and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Washington and Lee University (1990). Mr. Heinrich was admitted to the State Bar of California in 2001.