Bryan S. Hales

I'll research this attorney before drafting.

Bryan S. Hales — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Specialty / focus areas. Hales is a first-chair patent and trade secret trial lawyer whose practice is weighted toward life sciences: pharmaceuticals (including Hatch-Waxman/generic defense), medical devices and orthopaedics. His Kirkland bio and Chambers/Legal 500 profiles describe a "heavy slate" of pharma, life sciences and medical device work alongside matters in telecommunications, software, optical networking, 3-D technology, material compositions, DNA array technology and automotive components. The tracked docket confirms the range: the ITC/coated-confectionery matter (Promotion In Motion v. New Cibo Vita) is a food-science patent dispute, while IoT Innovations v. Monitronics involved home-automation/IoT security-system patents asserted in E.D. Tex.

Side preference. Tracked appearances are 2 plaintiff / 1 defendant, but that split is misleading as a description of his book of business. Both plaintiff-side tracked matters involve operating companies asserting their own patents (Promotion In Motion is the Welch's fruit-snack brand owner), not NPE/PAE assertion. His publicly reported results are overwhelmingly defense-side — generic pharmaceutical challenges, ZimmerBiomet orthopaedic disputes, Sandoz — and his firm bio describes representing companies monetizing portfolios through licensing, not asserting as a plaintiff's NPE firm. Net: he works both sides but is best characterized as a defense-oriented trial lawyer who also prosecutes patents for operating-company clients.

Firm context. He is a partner (Bryan S. Hales, P.C.) at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago. The tracked data also lists a single appearance at Brinks Gilson & Lione (the IoT Innovations defense of Monitronics/Brinks Home) — I could not independently verify that association through public sources, and note that docket filings in that case list other Brinks attorneys of record, so this may be a stale or differently-attributed entry. No in-house role identified.

Notable cases and outcomes. Reported highlights include: defending Astellas Pharma in Delaware federal court against a generic challenge to its branded overactive bladder treatment (March 2026, recognized by The American Lawyer Litigation Daily); winning a multi-patent case for Sandoz on a proposed generic ophthalmologic drug; a $14 million fee award after a 13-year ZimmerBiomet–Howmedica dispute; a bench win for Zimmer in Delaware defeating two orthopaedic surgeons' inventorship claims on artificial-knee patents; and several multi-hundred-million-dollar arbitration defenses. He also represented Dyson in Dyson v. SharkNinja. The IoT Innovations matter against Brinks Home was dismissed by stipulation in October 2023. Many of his most significant matters are confidential arbitrations, so results are only partially verifiable through public sources.

PTAB / IPR experience. His Kirkland bio states "extensive experience" with inter partes review and ex parte/inter partes reexamination, used as part of comprehensive district court defense strategy. No public IPR docket count was verified here.

Bar / education. Admitted Texas (1996) and Illinois (1997); registered before the Federal Circuit and Seventh Circuit and several district courts, including the Supreme Court bar. J.D., cum laude, University of Michigan Law School (1996, Order of the Coif); B.S., magna cum laude, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (1993).