Nicholas A. Brown

I'll research this attorney before drafting.

Let me verify the PTAB pro hac vice order and a few case outcomes.

Nicholas A. Brown — patent litigation practice summary

Nicholas A. Brown is a shareholder in Greenberg Traurig LLP's San Francisco office and, per Martindale, serves as vice chair of the firm's Global Patent Litigation Group. He joined Greenberg Traurig in October 2010 from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where he and Vernon M. Winters anchored a patent litigation team that GT hired to build out its San Francisco IP practice. His practice is patent and trade secret litigation, and the technology mix in his docket is broad rather than pharma- or standard-essential-specific: LED and lighting technology (lead counsel for Satco against UCSB and Seoul Semiconductor/Seoul Viosys), consumer products and mechanical devices (ITC matters involving iRobot robotic vacuums, Varidesk adjustable desks, Segway/Ninebot), software and internet platforms (Walker Digital social-networking cases for LinkedIn, MySpace and Tagged; Wildcat IP v. Pokémon on electronic trading cards), media/streaming (EFF v. Personal Audio), and brand-side ANDA work for Teva on Seasonique/LoSeasonique/Cenestin. He also has meaningful Section 337 experience at the ITC.

The tracked matter set is small (2 appearances, 1 plaintiff-side and 1 defendant-side, both as counsel), and the public record is consistent with a genuinely two-sided practice rather than a one-sided one. The bulk of his documented work is defense of operating companies — Google (Touchscreen Gestures), Satco, Rakuten Kobo (Pop Top), Tagged/New Life Ventures, Pokémon — but he also takes affirmative plaintiffs' and petitioners' work, including representing EFF as lead counsel in its IPR against Personal Audio and representing Satco as plaintiff against Seoul Semiconductor and Signify. The defendant-side entry in the tracked data is unnamed; a defendant-side matter of record for him is Pop Top Corp. v. Rakuten Kobo Inc.

Most prominent outcomes: EFF v. Personal Audio — as lead counsel for EFF, he obtained a PTAB final written decision invalidating claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,112,504 (the "podcasting patent"); the Federal Circuit affirmed in August 2017, and the invalidation later wiped out a $1.3M E.D. Tex. jury verdict against CBS in the parallel litigation. Regents of the University of California v. Satco Products — he argued for appellee Satco in the Federal Circuit (Nos. 2022-1106 et al.), which affirmed the Board's unpatentability holdings on four UCSB LED patents in a nonprecedential May 16, 2023 decision. He also won a post-trial judgment of invalidity in E.D. Tex. for Tagged/New Life Ventures, and obtained pro hac vice admission in iLife v. iRobot IPRs (IPR2017-02061, -02137). He has authored articles on IPR survival post-Oil States (2017) and on drafting patent settlements and licenses (2018).

PTAB/IPR: He appears regularly as petitioner's counsel in IPR proceedings, and the Board record is mixed rather than unblemished. In February 2021 the PTAB denied his pro hac vice motion in Satco v. Seoul Semiconductor (IPR2020-00836), finding his declaration statement that no sanction had been imposed was false because he had not disclosed a 2004 public reproval from the State Bar of California; the Board then sua sponte withdrew his previously granted pro hac vice admissions in several other Satco/Seoul IPRs (IPR2020-00146, -00410, -00608, -00704, -00750, -00813), and in September 2021 withdrew his admission in four additional UCSB-related IPRs (IPR2020-00579, -00695, -00780, -00813) after finding his narrow reading of "sanctions" unreasonable. Satco sought rehearing; the orders were adverse to him. Bar/education: admitted in California in 1998 (Cal. Bar No. 198210); Princeton University, A.B. 1995; Harvard Law School, J.D. magna cum laude 1998; also admitted to the Federal Circuit, Ninth Circuit, U.S. Supreme Court, and several district courts, including E.D. Tex.