Nathan Kelley

Nathan Kelley — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Nathan Kelley ("Nate") is a Washington, D.C.–based IP partner at Perkins Coie (now Ashurst Perkins Coie), where he co-chairs the firm's Federal Circuit patent appeals practice. His practice centers on patent appellate litigation, inter partes reviews (IPRs) at the PTAB, and related USPTO work, spanning pharmaceuticals, medical devices, software, computer networking, and semiconductors — the field where he began his career as a USPTO patent examiner. He has argued more than 40–50 Federal Circuit appeals, including several en banc cases, and defended hundreds of PTAB/TTAB decisions while serving as USPTO Solicitor (per firm bio, Chambers, and IAM Patent 1000). His PTAB/IPR bona fides are unusually deep: he was acting Chief Administrative Patent Judge of the PTAB during the AIA rollout and helped draft the AIA trial rules, and IPR work remains a core part of his practice.

Kelley works both sides of the docket. His two tracked appearances split evenly — plaintiff-side for Microsoft and defendant-side for Google — and he states he represents individual patent holders, mid-size companies, and large tech and pharmaceutical corporations alike, with no apparent NPE or operating-company tilt. Tracked matters include Microsoft Corp. et al. v. InterDigital Patent Holdings Inc., where he appeared for Microsoft in its FRAND/standard-essential-patent declaratory action over InterDigital's 4G/5G cellular patents, and Google LLC v. IPA Technologies Inc., the long-running speech-recognition patent dispute brought by Quarterhill/Wi-LAN subsidiary IPA Technologies over Google Assistant; the Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB IPR decisions favoring Google in January 2026 (nonprecedential Rule 36), though Paul Hastings argued that appeal. Notable verified results include his oral argument and July 2024 precedential Federal Circuit reversal for Amarin in the "skinny label" Hatch-Waxman appeal against Hikma, and, in government service, his involvement in landmark cases including Oil States, Aqua Products, Cuozzo, and Supreme Court deliberations in Alice, Teva, and WesternGeco.

Kelley joined Perkins Coie in 2018 after more than a decade at the USPTO (Associate Solicitor through Solicitor and Deputy General Counsel) and after serving as a Federal Circuit technical assistant and law clerk to Judge Randall Rader; he began his career at Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox. He holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from George Mason's Antonin Scalia Law School (1999) and a B.S. from George Mason (1993), with an undergraduate background in electrical engineering (per Vault Q&A). He is admitted in the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Federal and Fourth Circuits (firm bio).