Nicholas J Santoro

I'll research this attorney's professional background before drafting.

Let me dig into the specific tracked cases and any PTAB/IPR activity.

Professional Summary — Nicholas J. Santoro (Spencer Fane LLP, Las Vegas)

Specialty / focus. Santoro is a Nevada commercial litigator whose tracked patent work sits in the gaming and gambling-technology space. All three tracked matters involve Evolution Malta Limited's electronic-gaming portfolio — principally the "Lightning Roulette" patents (U.S. 10,629,024; 11,011,014; 11,756,371 — the Haushalter family — and U.S. 9,905,074; 11,783,663 — the Merati family) — and the disputes turned heavily on § 101/Alice eligibility and IPR practice rather than claim-construction-heavy technical trials. His broader practice, as described by his firm and Chambers, is general complex commercial litigation: hotel/casino and gaming-technology clients, utilities, government agencies, homebuilders, real estate developers, and law firms, spanning business torts, class action defense, non-competes, real estate/construction disputes, and professional liability. Nothing in the record indicates Wi-Fi/standards, pharmaceutical, or mechanical patent work.

Side preference. The tracked data show two defendant-side and one plaintiff-side entries, all through Spencer Fane. Notably, the Evolution Malta v. Light & Wonder entries appear on both sides of the same caption, which is consistent with local-counsel docketing in a case carrying counterclaims rather than with a genuine two-sided patent practice. The pattern is that of a Nevada local-counsel role supporting national IP litigation teams — not a plaintiff-side NPE/PAE monetization practice and not primarily a defense-only practice. Court filings also show him serving as Nevada local counsel for the Aristocrat Technologies plaintiffs against Light & Wonder in a parallel gaming-patent suit (D. Nev. 2:24-cv-00382), which reinforces that his patent-side work is venue-driven rather than side-driven.

Firm context and notable matters. He is a partner at Spencer Fane, which combined with Nevada-based Holley Driggs (a firm-name-change notice substituting Spencer Fane was filed in the Nevada gaming litigation in November 2024); he was previously a Holley Driggs partner. His most prominent tracked matter is Evolution Malta Ltd. v. Light & Wonder, Inc. (D. Nev. 2:24-cv-00993), where the court dismissed Evolution's patent claims under § 101 in February 2025 without prejudice, and after two amended complaints (and an intervening settlement conference that failed), again granted dismissal in an order issued March 30, 2026 and amended April 6, 2026 — reported as a dismissal with prejudice based on patent-ineligible subject matter. Evolution's trade-secret counts were ordered to ICC arbitration in September 2025. In the three co-pending IPRs (Light & Wonder v. Evolution Malta, IPR2025-01072/-01073/-01078), the Director terminated the proceedings in June 2026 in a precedential decision (Paper 30, June 22, 2026) that also extended the deadline for requesting Director Review of institution decisions from 14 to 30 days. The third tracked matter, Unified Patents v. Evolution Malta Ltd., appears in the case list with Santoro as counsel for Evolution; I could not verify from public sources whether it is a district court action or a PTAB challenge, and I found no public docket confirming his personal appearance in it.

PTAB/IPR and credentials. There is no evidence that Santoro appears regularly — or at all — as counsel of record before the PTAB; in the Evolution/Light & Wonder IPRs, Evolution's lead and backup counsel were Sidley Austin attorneys (Broughan, Fukuda, Lee), not Santoro, so his role in the underlying dispute appears to have been at the district-court level as Nevada counsel. I found no USPTO patent-bar registration for him. Bar: Nevada (admitted 1983); education: J.D., University of San Diego School of Law (1983); B.A., University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1980). He is ranked Band 1 in Chambers USA (Litigation: General Commercial, Nevada) and is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers (Nevada State Committee Chair, 2024–2026).