McKenzie Chen

McKenzie Chen — patent litigation profile

Specialty / focus. Chen is a registered patent agent (USPTO Reg. No. 79,222), not a licensed attorney, whose practice at Perkins Coie centers on patent prosecution and portfolio counseling rather than first-chair district court litigation. His firm bio describes work in telecommunications, autonomous vehicles, software algorithms, data platforms/networking, ML/AI, medical devices/healthcare, and financial systems, with standards analysis, claim charting and due diligence as recurring tasks (perkinscoie.com/professionals/mckenzie-chen). USPTO filing data lists him as affiliated with applicants including ZTE, T-Mobile, OPPO, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, SK hynix, the Regents of the University of California and Cohere Technologies — a portfolio skewed toward wireless/telecom and standards-adjacent subject matter (patentbots.com practitioner profile, Reg. No. 79222). The one tracked litigation matter is a gaming/geolocation software patent dispute, consistent with the software and networking side of that mix rather than pharma or mechanical work.

Side preference and firm context. The tracked record is thin and one-sided: a single appearance, on the plaintiff/patent-owner side (1 plaintiff, 0 defendant). As a patent agent he cannot serve as litigation counsel of record, so the "back-up counsel" designation on AG 18, LLC d/b/a Arrow Gaming v. DraftKings Inc. most likely reflects the parallel PTAB representation rather than a district court appearance — I could not verify a district court notice of appearance in his name. He is at Perkins Coie (firm bio lists Palo Alto; USPTO correspondence and PTAB power-of-attorney filings list the Chicago office, 110 N. Upper Wacker Dr., and an email of record chen_mckenzie-ptab@perkinscoie.com), and previously worked as a patent agent at Alston & Bird and as a patent engineer intern at Holland & Hart.

Notable matters and PTAB work. His most prominent tracked matter is the Arrow Gaming/DraftKings dispute (D.N.J. No. 2:21-cv-15737), where AG 18 asserted patents on location-based restrictions for networked gaming. He is named in the patent owner's powers of attorney as back-up counsel in the related IPR family (e.g., IPR2022-01442, -01446, -01447). Those proceedings went badly for the patent owner: the Board's March 12–13, 2024 final written decisions invalidated all asserted claims except claim 18 of U.S. Patent No. 9,978,205, and the district case was stayed. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's refusal to let DraftKings raise a new ground against claim 18 (DK Crown Holdings Inc. v. AG 18, LLC, No. 2024-2078, May 6, 2026) and affirmed in the '498 patent IPR appeal (No. 2024-1821, April 15, 2026). Argument in both appeals was handled by Perkins Coie partners Patrick J. McKeever and Jonathan I. Tietz; there is no indication Chen argued or briefed those appeals. So while he has documented PTAB involvement, the available record shows him in a supporting back-up capacity, not as a lead or repeat first-chair in IPR/PGR proceedings.

Bar / education. USPTO-registered patent agent only (no state bar admission found); M.S., Electrical & Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (2020); B.S., Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin (2019).