Anish Desai

Anish Desai is a prominent first-chair patent litigator with extensive experience handling complex, high-stakes disputes across a broad spectrum of life sciences and technology sectors. His practice areas encompass biopharma, medical devices, aerospace, software, and consumer electronics, including technologies such as eye treatments, jet engines, robotic surgical systems, speech recognition, smartphones, Wi-Fi, and computer networking. Desai consistently represents clients in competitor disputes, adeptly navigating federal district courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and arbitration proceedings. His work includes both pursuing infringement claims for plaintiffs and defending operating companies.

Desai has achieved significant outcomes for his clients, including securing a US$170 million jury verdict for a global industrial company in the Northern District of Texas. He also successfully obtained complete dismissal of a patent infringement action under Section 101 for a software technology company, a decision later affirmed by the Federal Circuit. In the life sciences sector, he led an ITC case for a pharmaceutical company where the competitor withdrew its complaint, and subsequently invalidated an asserted patent through an inter partes review (IPR), with the Federal Circuit affirming the invalidation.

A seasoned practitioner before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), Desai has served as lead counsel in over 100 IPR proceedings. For an aerospace client, he filed 36 IPR petitions challenging 31 patents, leading to the patent owner disclaiming more than 200 claims and the PTAB finding over 100 additional claims invalid.

Desai's career began as an associate at McDermott Will & Emery, followed by over 16 years at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he was promoted to partner in 2014. He then joined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP as a partner in November 2024, before moving to Dechert LLP as a partner in March 2026. He holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.