Benton J. Gaffney

I'll research this attorney's professional background before writing the summary.

Benton J. Gaffney — patent litigation summary

Focus areas. The only tracked patent matter for Mr. Gaffney is Aspex Eyewear, Inc. et al. v. Altair Eyewear, Inc., a long-running dispute over eyeglass-frame patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,737,054, 6,012,811 and 6,092,896) covering magnetic clip-on/auxiliary lens assemblies. That is a consumer-product, mechanical/eyewear technology case rather than a standards, pharma or software matter, and the record available to me shows no other tracked patent filings. A third-party directory listing describes his broader practice areas as intellectual property, patent and trademark application, copyright, communications/media, commercial and contracts work, but that listing is an unverified aggregator source and I could not confirm it against a Davis Wright Tremaine attorney biography. I found no publicly available DWT practice description for him, so any statement about the range of technologies he handles generally would be speculative.

Side preference and firm context. On the authoritative counts he is 0 appearances for plaintiffs and 1 for defendants, i.e., a defense-side practice as reflected in the tracked data. He is listed at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, an AmLaw 100 firm with a substantial Seattle-based IP litigation group, and the tracked appearance is likewise attributed to that firm. His Aspex representation was as counsel for defendant Altair Eyewear. I could not verify any prior firm history for him, and note the important disambiguation that Paul B. Gaffney of Williams & Connolly is a different attorney with an unrelated biopharma/media patent practice; the two should not be conflated.

Notable case and outcome. In Aspex, Altair prevailed on summary judgment of non-infringement in the Southern District of New York (485 F. Supp. 2d 310 (S.D.N.Y. 2007)). On appeal, the Federal Circuit (288 F. App'x 697 (Fed. Cir. 2008)) affirmed non-infringement of the '811 and '896 patents and the denial of summary judgment on standing, but reversed the district court's construction of "frame" and vacated the non-infringement judgment as to the '054 patent; the case was later reassigned and transferred to the District of Massachusetts under § 1404(a), where the parties proceeded on a "case stated" and Altair also pursued reexamination of the '054 patent at the USPTO. Mr. Gaffney appears among counsel of record for Altair in the later proceedings.

PTAB / IPR experience. No IPR, PGR or other PTAB proceedings involving Mr. Gaffney were found in my searches; the post-issuance challenge in the tracked case was a USPTO reexamination, not an IPR.

Bar / education. A directory profile indicates Washington State Bar admission since 2001; I could not independently verify this against the WSBA register, and I found no reliably sourced education information, so I have omitted it rather than guess.