Darren E. Donnelly

I'll research this attorney before drafting.

Let me dig into the tracked case and his notable matters.

Darren E. Donnelly — patent litigation summary

Practice focus. Donnelly is an IP and technology litigator whose practice descriptions emphasize computing, networking and inter-networking/telecommunications, interactive television, cloud storage and "big data" processing, cryptographic circuits and algorithms, computer gaming and in-game social networking, satellite remote sensing, bioinformatics and polymer materials, plus Section 337 investigations at the ITC. His only tracked appearance in the case data is NSV Group FZCO v. BD Innovation Collective, Inc. (S.D. Cal., No. 3:26-cv-02426, filed April 2026, Judge Gonzalo Curiel), a patent infringement complaint asserting U.S. Patent 8,365,799 that he filed as counsel for the plaintiff. That single data point is too thin to infer a technology specialty from the case list alone; third-party docket analytics classify the matter's sector as transportation/e-commerce, which I could not independently verify. Given the limited tracked set, the technology profile above rests on his firm and directory practice descriptions rather than on the docket record.

Side preference. On the authoritative case list he is 1-for-1 on the plaintiff side, all as lead counsel. That is not representative of his broader practice: Polsinelli's hiring announcement and his IAM author profile both describe him as representing "innovation-focused companies, both large and small," and as having appeared for both plaintiffs and defendants in ITC Section 337 proceedings. Treat the plaintiff-only tracked count as a sample-size artifact rather than a true NPE/PAE-side practice.

Firm context. He is a principal in Polsinelli's Intellectual Property Department in the Bay Area (San Francisco/Silicon Valley offices). He joined Polsinelli from Fenwick & West, where he was a partner for roughly 17 years (c. 2001–2018) doing patent, technology and IP litigation and counseling; earlier in his career he was an associate at McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen (c. 1998–2001). He is admitted to the State Bar of California (No. 194335, admitted February 1998). Education: J.D., Santa Clara University (1997); master's in Engineering-Economic Systems and a bachelor's in Mathematical and Computational Science and Economics, both Stanford University. Some directories list him as a registered patent attorney; I could not confirm that registration from a primary source.

Notable matters and PTAB experience. His most visible public work is the Silver Peak Systems v. Riverbed WAN-optimization/network data-deduplication dispute, where he represented patent owner Silver Peak in PTAB proceedings (e.g., IPR2014-00245 on U.S. 8,392,684 and IPR2015-00711 on U.S. 7,343,867) and on appeal to the Federal Circuit in Silver Peak Systems, Inc. v. Matal (No. 15-2072), where the Board had cancelled claims 1–24 of the '684 patent and rejected the proposed substitute claims. He has also appeared for The Nielsen Company (US) LLC as defense counsel in E.D. Tex. The IPR dockets show he appears in PTAB proceedings on both the patent-owner and petitioner sides, so recurring IPR/PGR involvement is well supported. He is also a frequent author of Fenwick patent litigation alerts, including on the en banc Akamai/McKesson divided-infringement decision, In re Link_A_Media Devices, and Suprema v. ITC. No public verdict, judgment, or settlement figures for him were verifiable from the sources reviewed.