Dagim Tilahun

Dagim Tilahun — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Dagim Tilahun is an associate in the Intellectual Property Practice Group at Haynes Boone's Washington, D.C., office. His practice centers on post-grant proceedings before the USPTO (IPR/PGR), with supporting work in patent litigation and licensing, drawing on prior patent-prosecution experience as both associate and patent agent. His technology areas are broad and technical: LTE/5G wireless, software and AI-enabled precision medicine/digital health, medical devices, NLP, robotics, and semiconductor technologies, plus standard-essential-patent counseling for video-codec standards (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, H.266/VVC, VP9, AV1) — the latter reflected in his video-coding IPR work.

Both tracked appearances are on the plaintiff/petitioner side (2-0), representing large operating companies — Cisco and Intel — in inter partes review challenges. (The tracked "plaintiff" label follows IPR naming convention; in the parallel district-court cases, Damaka v. Cisco (E.D. Tex.) and Advanced Cluster Systems v. Intel (W.D. Tex.), those companies are defendants.) His engagements for Unified Patents likewise target patents owned by NPEs. He joined Norton Rose Fulbright in early 2022 as part of an IP/digital-health team that moved from Haynes & Boone (partners Roger Kuan and Jason Novak), and is now back at Haynes Boone; his New York registration history also shows a Mintz Levin affiliation in 2022 that is not independently confirmed.

Notable matters include Cisco Systems Inc. v. Damaka Inc. (IPR2026-00206 to -00211), where he served as back-up counsel on Cisco's petitions challenging Damaka's "superblock/function block" video-conferencing software patents — IPR2026-00208 was denied institution on discretionary grounds (May 2026) — and Intel Corporation v. Advanced Cluster Systems, Inc. (IPR2025-00913 et al., with AMD), where he was back-up counsel on petitions challenging cluster-computing patents; the Director rejected discretionary denial and referred the petitions to the Board, and IPR2025-00913 was instituted (Nov. 2025). He also represented Unified Patents in instituted challenges to NPE-owned MPEG-DASH (Malikie) and H.265 (Velos) patents. No trial verdicts or Federal Circuit appeals involving him surfaced in search.

PTAB/IPR experience: This is the core of his practice — he appears regularly in IPR proceedings as back-up counsel and has handled ex parte reexamination (e.g., the Velos H.265 matter). Bar/education: J.D., Fordham University School of Law (2019); Ph.D. in physics, University of Texas at Austin; admitted in New York and D.C.; registered with the USPTO (Reg. No. 75,722).