Benjamin C. Elacqua

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Benjamin C. Elacqua — Patent Litigation Summary

Specialty / focus. Elacqua is a Houston-based first-chair patent trial lawyer whose practice centers on standards-essential patents (SEPs) and FRAND licensing and litigation. In September 2025 Fish & Richardson named him co-leader (with Christina McDonough) of its newly formalized SEP practice, with Elacqua leading the litigation side; the firm credits the practice with work spanning 5G, Wi-Fi, and HEVC/AVC standards, and Elacqua has described handling multi-forum campaigns across U.S. district courts, the ITC, and the PTAB, coordinated with foreign counsel in Germany, the U.K., and Brazil. Beyond SEPs, his stated technical range is broad — telecommunications, computer hardware and software, medical devices, chemistry, mechanical products, and consumer products. His tracked docket is narrower than that profile: all six tracked matters arise from the Proxense v. Microsoft / Microsoft v. Proxense dispute over Proxense's biometric authentication and "personal digital key" patents (Windows Hello, Microsoft Identity, FIDO2/WebAuthn authentication), litigated in the Western District of Texas and in PTAB proceedings.

Side preference. The tracked set is 5 defendant-side to 1 plaintiff-side, and the defense work is concentrated on the Microsoft side of the Proxense campaign, where he is variously recorded as principal filer, counsel, Texas counsel, and lead local counsel. That said, he is not exclusively a defense lawyer: publicly filed pleadings show him representing Neonode Smartphone LLC as plaintiff against Apple (N.D. Cal.) and Samsung, and he has served as lead counsel for The Chamberlain Group as plaintiff in affirmative infringement suits. Net read: he primarily defends operating companies against patent assertions, but also takes selective plaintiff-side representations for both operating companies and patent-holding entities.

Firm context. Principal at Fish & Richardson in Houston. According to MLex (Sept. 2025), he had been practicing in Houston for roughly 20 years at that point, 17 of them at Fish, which is consistent with a 2006 law degree. One tracked entry lists him as district-court counsel with the firm Desmarais on the plaintiff side in Microsoft Corp. v. Proxense, LLC; that single docket-listed association is anomalous against the rest of his record and I could not independently verify its significance, so treat it with caution.

Notable matters and outcomes. The best-documented results are for Chamberlain Group: as lead counsel he obtained a $43.4 million jury verdict in the Eastern District of Texas in January 2023 (Chamberlain Group v. Overhead Door, No. 2:21-cv-00084), after Judge Gilstrap ordered a partial retrial and sanctioned the defendants for late disclosure; separately, following a 2017 willful-infringement verdict against Ryobi/Techtronic in the Northern District of Illinois, he helped secure a permanent injunction, treble damages, and attorneys' fees. His firm bio also credits him with coordinating strategy in a major global SEP/royalty dispute (the Apple–Qualcomm litigation, where he appeared as Apple counsel in the Southern District of California) and serving as global and lead ITC counsel in a multi-year patent and contract dispute against Ericsson that ended in a licensing agreement. In the tracked Proxense matters, Microsoft's PTAB challenges succeeded in cancelling all claims of Proxense's '730 patent, and Microsoft moved to dismiss the district court '730 claims with prejudice on that basis; the Neonode patents he asserted against Apple and Samsung were ultimately held unpatentable, with the Federal Circuit affirming under Rule 36 (Fed. Cir. No. 22-2134).

PTAB / IPR. He works in matters with substantial PTAB components — including the Proxense IPRs (IPR2024-00573 and related) and the Neonode IPRs (IPR2021-00144/00145) — and has personally signed IPR-related correspondence and stipulation strategy. Note, however, that the oral advocacy in the Proxense IPRs was handled by other Fish attorneys (Roberto Devoto's team), so the record does not establish him as the PTAB advocate of record in those proceedings; the reliable statement is that he manages SEP/patent campaigns in which parallel IPR and district court tracks are coordinated.

Bar / education. Texas State Bar No. 24055443 (per district court filings); J.D., Suffolk University, 2006 (per Best Lawyers). Admitted pro hac vice in the Southern District of California. No other bar admissions were reliably sourced.