James Scott Ballenger

J. Scott Ballenger is a highly experienced attorney whose patent litigation practice, primarily developed during his two decades at Latham & Watkins, focused on appellate and Supreme Court litigation involving intellectual property issues. He is now an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Appellate Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Throughout his patent litigation career, Mr. Ballenger primarily represented defendants, defending operating companies against patent assertions. His notable experience includes representing Capital One Financial Corporation as counsel in Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Financial Corporation. In this significant case, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment that Intellectual Ventures' asserted patents, related to internet activities and photography organization, were invalid for claiming unpatentable abstract ideas under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and, for one patent, also indefinite under § 112(b). This outcome effectively ended the infringement claims against Capital One.

While his practice at Latham & Watkins encompassed strategic analysis and briefing in high-stakes district court litigation across various areas including antitrust, constitutional law, and business issues, his publicly available professional summaries do not regularly highlight appearances in PTAB or IPR proceedings. Mr. Ballenger is a graduate of the University of Virginia (B.A. 1993, J.D. 1996), and notably clerked for Judge Clifford Wallace of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has argued three cases before the Supreme Court and numerous cases in federal courts of appeals.