Daniel M. Desmarais

I'll research this attorney before writing the summary.

Let me dig into the specific cases and the attorney's identity.

Summary: Daniel M. Desmarais — patent litigation

Verification note up front. I was unable to locate a reliably sourced public professional profile (firm bio, bar record, court opinion, or press coverage) for an attorney specifically named Daniel M. Desmarais in connection with these matters. The only well-documented patent litigator bearing this distinctive surname is John M. Desmarais, founding partner of Desmarais LLP; the two names appear to be conflated in some public records. Everything below is grounded in the authoritative case list, with the limits of independent verification flagged rather than papered over.

Specialty / focus and side preference. Both tracked appearances are plaintiff-side patent assertions, and both have the hallmarks of non-practicing-entity campaigns. Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. Hewlett-Packard Company involves display/backlight and light-guide panel technology; IDT is an Acacia-lineage entity asserting patents originating with inventor Jeffery R. Parker, and those patents were the subject of a substantial IPR docket (e.g., IPR2015-01717) handled by other counsel. Piney Woods Mobility LLC v. Verizon Communications, Inc. (E.D. Tex., filed Feb. 13, 2026) asserts a portfolio traced to X One, Inc. — the same plaintiff filed a parallel action against AT&T the same day, and Apple filed a declaratory-judgment action against Piney Woods in the Northern District of California. On the tracked record the practice is 2-0 plaintiff side, i.e., plaintiff/NPE-side assertion work rather than defense of operating companies. One caveat: a hearing transcript appearing in a USPTO record shows a "Mr. Desmarais" advocating Verizon's claim-construction position in a VLAN/VSI bridging dispute. I could not confirm that the speaker is the same person as the attorney tracked here, or even that the transcript belongs to the Piney Woods case, so I flag it as unresolved rather than as contradicting the docket data.

Firm context. Both matters are attributed to a firm recorded simply as "Desmarais." If that refers to Desmarais LLP (offices in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.), the context is a litigation-only IP boutique founded in 2010 by John M. Desmarais after he left Kirkland & Ellis, where he had been a partner from 1997 to 2009. I could not confirm that a Daniel M. Desmarais is or was an attorney at that firm, so any firm-level credential or result should not be imputed to him personally. No prior-firm or in-house affiliation is verifiable from the sources reviewed, and there is no basis in the record to describe him as in-house counsel.

Notable matters and PTAB/IPR profile. The highlighted tracked matters are the two above; I found no reported verdict, settlement, or Federal Circuit decision attributable to a Daniel M. Desmarais in either. Firm-level Desmarais LLP outcomes — an $82.5M jury verdict for IBM against Groupon (settled for $57M), a $44.9M Delaware verdict for IBM against Zynga (Sept. 2024, on appeal), the roughly $400M Cisco–Arista settlement, and the Egenera patent invalidation win for Cisco — were led by other attorneys and are not attributable to this name. On PTAB work: Desmarais LLP as a firm has a deep IPR/PGR practice (recurring Patexia/Managing IP recognition; multiple Ravgen and IBM PTAB wins), and the IDT portfolio this attorney asserted was heavily IPR-challenged, but I found no petition, patent owner filing, or counsel designation naming Daniel M. Desmarais. Bar admissions, education, and registration status: not reliably sourced — omitted.