Eliot Damon Williams

Eliot Damon Williams is a highly experienced patent litigator and appellate advocate, currently serving as a partner and Co-Practice Group Chair for PTAB Trials at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he also chairs the firm's Palo Alto intellectual property department. His practice encompasses a broad range of intellectual property matters, including federal court litigation, licensing, patent prosecution, trademarks, copyrights, and extensive experience before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

Mr. Williams handles a diverse array of technologies, with particular expertise in areas such as ridesharing systems, streaming media, cryptographic authentication, payment technologies, internet search, data compression, semiconductor manufacturing, memory circuits, and cellular telephony. While he represents both plaintiffs and defendants, his firm frequently acts for large technology companies, often as petitioners in PTAB proceedings, for which Baker Botts was recognized as the most active general practice law firm from 2021-2023.

He possesses substantial PTAB and appellate experience, having appeared in over 300 PTAB Trials and more than 100 cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, arguing nearly two dozen. Notably, he was appellate counsel for Samsung in Netlist, Inc. v. Samsung, where the Federal Circuit affirmed the unpatentability of Netlist's memory module patent in December 2025. As lead counsel for Lyft, Inc. in Lyft, Inc. v. Rideshare Displays, Inc., he achieved a significant victory at the Federal Circuit in September 2025, which affirmed the PTAB's obviousness findings against five Rideshare patents and reversed the Board's allowance of substitute claims for patent ineligibility, with the Supreme Court denying Rideshare Displays' petition for certiorari in May 2026. His impressive track record also includes securing the vacatur of an adverse jury verdict and a new trial in a precedential Federal Circuit opinion for an electronic postage company.

Mr. Williams earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering, magna cum laude with honors, from Texas A&M University in 1996, and his J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law in 1999. He is admitted to practice in California and the District of Columbia, as well as before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Federal and Fifth Circuits.