James L. Higgins

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James L. Higgins — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Specialty and role. Higgins is a Delaware litigation partner at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor LLP (Wilmington), where he is a member of the Intellectual Property Litigation group and works primarily as Delaware/local counsel on teams led by national firms and in-house counsel. The firm's and his own practice descriptions cover patent disputes in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology/biosimilars, medical devices, industrial manufacturing equipment, cellular communications, and software, plus Hatch-Waxman and BPCIA matters; he also handles Court of Chancery fiduciary-duty and commercial work. His tracked matter fits the industrial/software-adjacent profile: commercial laundry payment technology.

Side preference. The tracked dataset shows one plaintiff-side appearance and zero defendant-side — but that single entry is a declaratory-judgment plaintiff (an operating company, Alliance Laundry) suing a patent owner, not an NPE asserting patents. Public dockets show a broader, largely defense-side record for operating companies (e.g., Amgen, Teva, Alvogen, Synthon, Praxair), which is consistent with the Delaware local-counsel model of representing product manufacturers accused of infringement. On balance he works both sides, but with no evident pattern of representing NPEs/PAEs — where a patent owner is adverse, he has been on the operating-company side.

Firm context. Young Conaway's IP group is ranked by Chambers USA (Band 2) and is known for serving as local and lead counsel in District of Delaware patent, trade secret, and Hatch-Waxman litigation. I found no publicly sourced indication of prior law firm or in-house positions outside Young Conaway; the earliest firm appearance I could verify is a 2008 Delaware filing.

Notable matters. The tracked case is Alliance Laundry Systems, LLC v. PayRange Inc., No. 1:24-cv-00733-MN (D. Del.) — Alliance's 2024 DJ action against PayRange, in which PayRange counterclaimed on the '772, '920, '423, and '608 patents. Higgins appears as Delaware counsel alongside Melanie K. Sharp; Alliance moved to dismiss the counterclaims on §101 grounds, arguing the asserted claims are abstract and that PayRange should be collaterally estopped by the PTAB's cancellation of materially identical claims. The dispute has since expanded into PTAB challenges filed by Alliance (PGR2025-00027; IPR2025-00573; IPR2025-00950), a follow-on Delaware suit (PayRange LLC v. Alliance Laundry Systems LLC, No. 1:26-cv-00634), and a related Wisconsin antitrust/false-advertising action in which PayRange's preliminary-injunction motion was denied. Other docketed Delaware appearances include Genentech v. Amgen, AbbVie v. Amgen, BioDelivery Sciences v. Teva, Mallinckrodt v. Praxair, Pfizer v. Synthon, Alvogen Pine Brook/Natco matters, Acuitas Therapeutics v. Alnylam, and (non-patent) Regeneron v. Amgen, where he was local counsel for Amgen and the jury returned a $406.8M judgment for Regeneron in May 2025. I did not verify any individual trial verdict personally attributable to Higgins beyond his local-counsel role.

PTAB/IPR. I found no verified record of Higgins as counsel of record before the PTAB; the IPR/PGR petitions in the Alliance–PayRange matters appear to be handled by the lead (non-Delaware) firms, which is typical for local counsel. Treat his IPR/PGR experience as unconfirmed rather than absent.

Bar and education. J.D., University of Pittsburgh School of Law; B.A., Duke University. Admitted in Delaware and the District of Columbia; admitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and the Third Circuit (Delaware Bar No. 5021). Note: several public filings list him as admitted in Delaware and D.C. only, notwithstanding appearances in D. Del. matters.