Michelle Callaghan

Michelle Callaghan is an in-house Senior Patent Counsel at Unified Patents, where her practice focuses heavily on post-grant proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). She joined Unified Patents in October 2019, bringing prior experience from Erise IP, where she defended clients in district court patent disputes and challenged patents at the PTAB.

Callaghan primarily represents Unified Patents in its mission to deter unsubstantiated or invalid patent assertions by non-practicing entities (NPEs). Her extensive experience, as evidenced by 16 plaintiff-side appearances for Unified Patents and only one defendant-side appearance (likely representing Unified Patents itself), demonstrates a strong plaintiff-side emphasis on challenging patents rather than defending operating companies in infringement suits. Her work spans a broad range of technologies, including communication networks, video coding and decoding, virtual reality, financial transaction security, mobile devices, vehicle systems, digital rights management, cloud storage, and multimedia content delivery. Notable cases in which she has appeared as counsel for Unified Patents include challenges against patents held by Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Samsung Display Co., Ltd., Smart Speaker LLC, Moskowitz Family LLC, Damaka Inc, Pegasus Wireless Innovation LLC, and RFCyber Corp.

Her practice is deeply rooted in PTAB and IPR proceedings, a core strategy for Unified Patents in invalidating asserted NPE patents. This includes preparing and litigating these post-grant challenges. For example, she was listed as counsel in IPR2019-00757, Unified Patents, LLC v. Velos Media, LLC. While specific outcomes directly tied to her in every listed case are not publicly detailed, her role at Unified Patents inherently involves working towards the invalidation of challenged patents, as seen in cases where Unified Patents successfully obtained Federal Circuit affirmances of IPR victories, such as against Intellectual Ventures and Causam Enterprises.

Michelle Callaghan earned her J.D. from the University of Colorado Law School, where she focused on intellectual property law and gained experience prosecuting patents through a law school clinical program. She also holds a B.S. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University. She is a registered patent attorney.