Debra Janece McComas

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Debbie J. McComas — Patent Litigation & Federal Circuit Practice

Focus areas. McComas is a litigator and appellate lawyer whose patent work centers on Federal Circuit appeals and PTAB appeals, rather than claim-drafting or prosecution. Her tracked matters and published representations span a broad technology range rather than a single vertical: networking and cybersecurity (Centripetal Networks v. Palo Alto Networks), consumer electronics and mobile/wireless (Apple v. Smart Mobile Technologies; Apple v. Corephotonics), audio/video and media coding (Dolby v. Unified Patents; DivX streaming patents; video-coding claims in the Ideahub matters), geospatial/aerial imaging (EagleView v. Nearmap), mechanical/consumer products (Acufloor tile-leveling devices), food-safety chemistry (Safe Foods Corp. v. Enviro Tech), and oil-and-gas patent disputes. Her bios consistently describe her as a generalist litigator and appellate advocate — with trial, lender-liability, trade-secret, and foreign-sovereign work — who migrated into IPRs and patent appeals after the America Invents Act. No life-sciences/pharma or registered-patent-agent practice is evident in the public record.

Side preference. Her tracked appearances are mixed but defense-leaning: 5 defendant-side to 3 plaintiff-side. A large share of the defense work comes through Unified Patents, the defensive patent aggregator (which her firm also represents as petitioner/appellant, e.g., Unified Patents v. Ideahub), plus operating-company clients such as Apple, Cisco, X Corp., Snap and Meta. She is not exclusively a defense lawyer: she also enforces patents for owners such as EagleView and Acufloor, so the practice is best characterized as both sides, weighted toward defending technology companies and challenging asserted patents while still taking select patent-owner enforcement matters.

Firm context. She has spent essentially her entire career at Haynes and Boone, LLP in Dallas — Law360 described her in 2025 as approaching 30 years at the firm. She is a partner and chairs the firm's Federal Circuit Practice Group, and she holds the practice leadership role in the firm's Federal Circuit appellate group. No prior firm or in-house affiliation appears in the public record.

Notable matters, PTAB and credentials. Web-verifiable results include the Federal Circuit's May 2025 reversal reviving Acufloor's infringement suit against EvenTile/Forpac; affirmance of PTAB invalidation of a DivX streaming patent and a Xerox content-delivery patent (X Corp.); affirmance of the Board in Unified Patents v. Ideahub (Fed. Cir. 2023, IPR2020-00702) and again in the related PGR appeal decided April 2026; and PTAB denials of institution of two Nearmap IPRs against EagleView patents (Oct. 2024). Her firm bio credits her with affirmance of "dozens" of PTAB final written decisions, and in 2025 Law360 reported she and partner Angela Oliver won all seven patent appeals they argued that year. She is a frequent PTAB/IPR practitioner — primarily on the petitioner/patent-challenger side and in appeals from final written decisions, including a mandamus challenge to USPTO IPR institution criteria. Patexia's CAFC Intelligence Report ranked her first in overall Federal Circuit performance in 2025 (third in 2023), per Haynes Boone and Patexia; these are firm- and vendor-published rankings. Bar/education: J.D., Tulane University, 1995, cum laude; B.A., Austin College, 1990; admitted in Texas and to the Federal Circuit in 1998, with admissions across the Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits and multiple district courts. No USPTO patent-bar registration is listed in published bios.

Note: the tracked list includes one "untitled" defendant-side, of-counsel matter that cannot be characterized from available sources; the summaries above rely only on verified firm, court, Law360, Bloomberg Law and Justia records.