Cortlan S. Hitch

Cortlan S. Hitch is an attorney in the Intellectual Property Litigation Group at Morris James LLP, where he focuses his practice on patent litigation, trademark litigation, and intellectual property counseling. Based in Wilmington, Delaware, he frequently handles high-profile patent disputes in the District of Delaware, including Hatch-Waxman litigations and cases involving biosimilars. His experience spans diverse technology areas, including life sciences (e.g., spatial genomics and biology), environmental technologies (such as mercury emissions reduction), and software/general technology.

In his practice, Mr. Hitch represents both plaintiffs and defendants. According to tracked appearances, he has represented plaintiffs in five cases and defendants in three. Notably, he served as local counsel for 10x Genomics, Inc., which secured a $31 million patent infringement damages award against NanoString Technologies, Inc. in November 2023, a dispute that concluded with a global cross-license agreement in May 2025. He also acted as local counsel for 10x Genomics, Inc. in its litigation against Vizgen, Inc., which settled in February 2025 after three days of trial in the District of Delaware. Conversely, Mr. Hitch was local counsel for the CERT Operations II LLC defendants in Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. et al. v. CERT Operations II LLC et al., a case that resulted in a jury verdict of $57 million against the CERT defendants in March 2024, later increased to approximately $78 million with pre-judgment interest by December 2025.

Mr. Hitch is admitted to practice in Delaware, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. He earned his J.D., cum laude, from New York Law School in 2019, where he was a staff editor for the NYLS Law Review, and holds a B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of Delaware (2015). While he has been involved in district court cases related to patent disputes where inter partes reviews (IPRs) were a factor for other parties, direct appearances in IPR/PGR proceedings are not explicitly detailed in available professional profiles.