Alan S. Kellman

Alan S. Kellman — Patent Litigation Profile

Focus areas. Kellman is a first-chair patent trial lawyer at Desmarais LLP whose practice spans a wide technical range rather than a single field: telecommunications and networking (switching equipment, LAN/WAN, cellular telephony, transceivers), consumer electronics and software (smartphones, personal computers, digital audio/video coding and streaming, digital watermarking, microprocessors), medical devices and surgical products, life sciences (monoclonal antibodies), and mechanical/electro-mechanical systems (electro-chemical lighting, lottery networking systems, remote surgical robotics). His tracked appearance and several representative matters involve standard-adjacent wireless and media-streaming technologies.

Side preference. Public records show a genuinely two-sided practice, with a substantial patent-owner/NPE-side component — Intellectual Ventures, Oasis Research, Walker Digital, MobileMedia Ideas, EasyWeb Innovations, Sound View Innovations, and IngenioSpec — alongside defense work for operating companies such as Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Apple, and LifeCell. The structured case list here contains a single tracked appearance, on the plaintiff side (Ingeniospec, LLC v. Apple Inc., where he is listed as lead counsel for the plaintiff), which is consistent with, but too thin a sample to characterize, that broader pattern.

Firm context. Kellman is an original/founding partner of Desmarais LLP (New York), having left Kirkland & Ellis in 2010 with John Desmarais to launch the firm. He spent his earlier career at Kirkland & Ellis, where he became a partner in 2005. He is repeatedly listed individually in IAM Patent 1000 (currently Silver tier) and as an MIP "Patent Star."

Notable matters. Reported representations include Intellectual Ventures v. Canon/Nikon/Olympus (digital cameras/image sensors); Nokia v. HTC (ITC, smartphones/transceivers); GlaxoSmithKline v. Genentech (Herceptin and Lucentis); GSK v. Apotex (Paxil, patent and antitrust); Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft/Dell/Gateway (audio coding, video compression, protocols); and LifeCell v. TELA Bio (trade secret, surgical mesh). On the appellate side he argued EasyWeb Innovations v. Twitter in the Federal Circuit (Fed. Cir. 2017), which affirmed a § 101 ineligibility ruling against his client, and he was on the Desmarais brief in Sound View Innovations v. Hulu (Fed. Cir. 2026), which affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement on the ’213 streaming patent after a prior remand (33 F.4th 1326 (2022)).

PTAB / IPR. Available records show him as district-court-focused; his PTAB footprint is limited, with at least one proceeding listing him as backup counsel (2022). He should not be described as a routine IPR/PGR practitioner on the current record.

Bar / education. Admitted New York (2000); registered to practice before the USPTO; admitted in the S.D.N.Y., E.D.N.Y., and the Federal Circuit. J.D., Harvard Law School, 1999 (cum laude; Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology); B.S.E., Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (summa cum laude).

Sourcing note: the tracked IngenioSpec v. Apple appearance rests on the structured case list; public docket reporting on at least one related IngenioSpec complaint (W.D. Tex.) lists different plaintiff-side counsel, so his exact role may be in one of the consolidated actions rather than the one publicly summarized. Outcome details for several older representative matters (e.g., GSK v. Apotex) are not verified here.