John A. Cotiguala

John A. Cotiguala — Paul Hastings LLP (Chicago)

Specialty / focus. Cotiguala is Of Counsel in Paul Hastings' Intellectual Property practice group, based in Chicago, where his practice centers on patent, trade secret, and trademark disputes. Paul Hastings' own biography describes his technical range as spanning electronic trading and charting software, wireless/VoIP communication, encryption, optical identification devices, video compression, cryopreserved hepatocyte (biotech) preparations, golf equipment, oil and gas extraction, marine products, and solvent cements. The case record is consistent with that breadth: his docket work includes financial-trading GUI patents (Trading Technologies v. CQG), VoIP/call-routing patents (the VoIP‑Pal.com litigation), video-compression patents (Kove IO v. Google), and a marine-products patent suit (NABRICO Marine Products v. W.W. Patterson). He came to law after developing software in telecommunications and product life-cycle management, and holds a computer science degree. IAM Patent 1000 lists him ("Bronze — Individuals: litigation") and notes his work supporting trial teams on validity and enforceability issues and post-grant strategy.

Side preference. On the whole he is a defense-side litigator for operating technology companies. The tracked dataset here reflects a single appearance — a defendant-side, lead-counsel role — which is a thin sample relative to his actual docket. Public filings show him consistently among defense teams for Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and CQG, typically as part of trial groups led by Paul Hastings partner Robert W. Unikel. He is not an NPE/PAE-side filer, though he has appeared for patent-owner plaintiffs as well (e.g., as counsel for Celsis In Vitro/Rapid Litigation Management in the Federal Circuit § 101 appeal, for ENI‑JR286 in a pro hac vice appearance, and for NABRICO Marine Products in a 2026 infringement suit), so his experience is not purely one-sided.

Notable cases and outcomes. His most prominent publicly verifiable result is Trading Technologies International v. CQG (N.D. Ill.): after a three-week jury trial the jury found no indirect infringement, no infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, and no willfulness, awarding roughly $15.8 million in reasonable royalties against a demand reported at up to $783 million (a Law360 report put the award at about $16 million); the Federal Circuit affirmed. He also worked on Rapid Litigation Management Ltd. v. CellzDirect, Inc., 827 F.3d 1042 (Fed. Cir. 2016), a precedential decision in which the Federal Circuit reversed a district court's § 101 invalidation of claims to a multi-cryopreservation method for hepatocytes — a frequently cited patent-eligibility opinion. He has been part of Paul Hastings' defense teams in the long-running VoIP‑Pal.com campaign (Google, Meta, and others) and in Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Google. Law360's attorney page also lists recent matters including Kove IO, Inc. v. Google LLC (N.D. Ill., 2023), Longitude Licensing Ltd. v. Apple, Inc. (W.D. Tex., 2025), and BridgeNine Corp. v. Apple Inc. (C.D. Cal., 2026). The single case in the tracked list is unlabeled ("Untitled case") and cannot be identified from the data provided; the counts here should be treated as an incomplete snapshot rather than a full docket.

PTAB / IPR. He appears in post-grant proceedings, though not as a first-chair petitioner. USPTO filings show him as counsel (with Unikel, Matthew R. Lind, and Grayson S. Cornwell) in Google LLC v. VoIP‑Pal.com, Inc., IPR2022‑01073, and his name appears in related VoIP‑Pal IPR exhibit records; IAM notes his involvement in post-grant strategy. The record does not support describing him as a routine lead IPR advocate.

Bar / education (as sourced). Admitted in Illinois (Illinois Bar No. 6311056; licensed since 2013) and admitted pro hac vice in various districts and before the Federal Circuit; J.D., Chicago-Kent College of Law (IIT), 2012, with an IP certificate; B.S., Computer Science, Purdue University, 2004. No prior law-firm history is reliably documented — he appears in Paul Hastings filings going back to at least the mid‑2010s, and I found no verified record of an earlier firm.