Charles Hawkins

I'll research this attorney before writing the summary.

I have good initial data. Let me dig into the specific tracked case, prior firm history, and bar/education.

Let me look for his private-practice history and bar/education details.

Charles "Chuck" Hawkins — Patent Litigation Summary

Specialty / focus areas. Hawkins is an in-house IP and litigation executive, not a courtroom-first private practitioner. As Assistant General Counsel for Intellectual Property & Litigation at Volkswagen US Holding, Inc. ("VWUSH," Reston, Virginia), his portfolio covers patent litigation defense, post-grant proceedings before the USPTO, patent licensing, and strategic patent portfolio management. His work sits in the automotive and connected-vehicle space — the one tracked matter, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. v. Longhorn Automotive Group LLC, concerns an asserted GPS/telematics patent (U.S. Patent No. 8,085,192, "Device, System and Method for Controlling and Storing Sensitive Information on a GPS Device"). Before law practice he was an engineer at Chevron, which is consistent with the technical/mechanical-and-electronics cast of his docket.

Side preference. Effectively one-sided. All tracked activity is on the operating-company side — Hawkins appears as in-house counsel for Volkswagen, never for an NPE/PAE. The single tracked entry is nominally plaintiff-side because it captures Volkswagen as petitioner in an IPR, but the underlying dispute is defensive: VW filed the IPR after Longhorn sued it for infringement in the Eastern District of Texas. His public role description likewise frames the job around "patent litigation defense."

Firm context. No private-practice firm is named in any reliable source, so none is identified here. Public bios confirm only that before joining Volkswagen he was in private practice representing clients in patent infringement litigation in district court, the Federal Circuit, and the ITC. His current affiliation is in-house at Volkswagen (VWUSH / Volkswagen Group of America).

Notable cases / outcomes. The Longhorn matter is the standout and is instructive on outcome. Volkswagen petitioned for IPR (IPR2025-00925, filed April 24, 2025), and Hawkins signed the petition as Assistant General Counsel. The PTAB/Acting Director granted Longhorn's request for discretionary denial under § 314(a), citing the parallel E.D. Tex. case (Longhorn Automotive Group LLC v. Volkswagen AG, No. 2:24-cv-00933-JRG, Judge Gilstrap) and its proximity to trial; Director Review was denied in November 2025. Volkswagen then sought a Federal Circuit writ of mandamus on a nondelegation theory (In re Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., No. 26-123). The Federal Circuit denied the petition on March 19, 2026 (per curiam; Dyk, Reyna, Hughes), holding that the Director's non-institution discretion is executive, not legislative, power. That proceeding drew an amicus brief from a coalition of industry groups. Net: the tracked matter ended adversely to Volkswagen at both the agency and appellate stages.

PTAB / IPR experience. Yes — this is a core part of his stated role, and he personally executed the Longhorn IPR petition. Volkswagen as a company has been a frequent IPR petitioner against NPE-asserted patents and has publicly advocated for the IPR process (e.g., its 2017 Oil States amicus brief, which described using IPRs to invalidate asserted patents and avoid meritless suits); that company-level posture should not be read as a personal appearance record, which is thin (one tracked matter).

Bar / education. Not reliably sourced in the material reviewed; omitted rather than speculated. The only verifiable pre-law credential is prior engineering employment at Chevron.