Patrick Darno

I'll research this attorney before drafting.

Patrick Darno — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Specialty / focus areas. Darno is a Washington, D.C.–based principal at Fish & Richardson whose practice is grounded in patent prosecution and counseling, with a litigation and PTAB component. Fish's own description of his practice covers U.S. and foreign patent prosecution in bioinformatics, mobile communications, e-commerce, databases, and data processing, and he has authored firm content on § 101/Alice software-eligibility strategy, bioinformatics patenting, and digital health. The tracked litigation is concentrated in geospatial/aerial-imagery technology: the Nearmap US v. EagleView Technologies disputes over patents covering aerial roof measurement and 3D building reconstruction. His PTAB work spans the same subject matter plus consumer electronics and wireless-related matters.

Side preference. He works both sides rather than specializing as a defense-only or NPE-side lawyer. The tracked appearance list is evenly split (2 plaintiff-side, 2 defendant-side), which reflects the posture of the Nearmap/EagleView conflict — Nearmap appears as the accused infringer in the district court action and as petitioner challenging EagleView's patents at the PTAB. On the patent-office side, he has consistently appeared for petitioners (Nearmap against EagleView; LG Electronics against Constellation Designs; named on a Tesla IPR power of attorney), i.e., on the validity-challenge side. His primary commercial orientation, however, is prosecution/counseling for technology companies rather than plaintiff-side enforcement.

Firm context. Fish & Richardson is his current firm (registered agent address: 901 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C.); he was elevated to principal effective January 1, 2022. Public records indicate an earlier association with McGuireWoods (he presented on patents and patent litigation for the firm in Richmond, Va., in April 2012, and a Martindale listing shows a McGuireWoods Tysons, Va. entry with 2012 admission), before moving to Fish. He also spent time as a patent examiner at the USPTO prior to private practice.

Notable cases / outcomes. The most prominent tracked matters are the Nearmap–EagleView disputes. In the inter partes reviews, Darno was lead speaker for Nearmap at the PTAB hearing in IPR2022-01009 and IPR2022-01090 (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,670,961 and 8,078,436), and was counsel of record in IPR2022-00734 (the '737 patent), where he argued at the hearing and where the Board's final written decision was vacated and remanded on Director Review (Feb. 20, 2024) for failure to resolve claim construction and apply the Graham factors. The Federal Circuit subsequently affirmed the PTAB's obviousness holdings cancelling claims of the '961 and '436 patents (Eagle View Techs. v. Nearmap, No. 24-1488, Fed. Cir. Feb. 3, 2026) — counsel of record on appeal was another Fish attorney, so this is a favorable result in a case Darno worked rather than one he argued on appeal. On the patent-owner side of the same family, Haynes & Boone (for EagleView) defeated institution of Nearmap's later IPR2024-00716 and IPR2024-00729, and the parallel Utah district court action (EagleView v. Nearmap, 2:21-cv-00283) was stayed in August 2025 pending the PTO and Federal Circuit proceedings. He also participated in hearings in LG Electronics v. Constellation Designs (IPR2023-00319).

PTAB / IPR experience. Yes — he appears regularly in AIA post-grant proceedings, principally as petitioner-side counsel, and the record shows him arguing at PTAB oral hearings rather than only being listed on papers.

Bar / education. Admitted in Virginia (2012); registered to practice before the USPTO (Reg. No. 69,205). J.D., Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (2012); B.S., computer engineering, Pennsylvania State University (2005).

Note on sourcing: the litigation/PTAB record and the prosecution biography are consistent with a single individual (Fish & Richardson, Washington, D.C., USPTO Reg. No. 69,205). The McGuireWoods pre-Fish connection is supported by a 2012 event listing and a directory entry but should be treated as less firmly documented than the Fish-era record.