Samuel Carno Leifer

Specialty / focus. Samuel Carno Leifer is a litigation partner in the Boston office of Kirkland & Ellis, where his practice centers on complex commercial disputes — contract litigation, class actions, business torts, and patent litigation — alongside government-facing matters under the False Claims Act, FTC Act, and Communications Decency Act (per his Kirkland bio). His tracked patent work is entirely defense-side (1 of 1 appearances), and the technology context is software/mobile-gaming platforms; no pharma, Wi-Fi/standards, or mechanical patent matters appear in his public docket. Kirkland describes him as representing both plaintiffs and defendants generally, but his patent exposure is as defense counsel. He is not a registered patent attorney (no USPTO number appears; his degree is in psychology/philosophy), consistent with a commercial-litigation rather than technical-prosecution profile.

Firm context and notable matters. Leifer joined Kirkland after stints at another (unnamed) international firm and a clerkship with Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit. His highest-profile matter is Skillz Platform Inc. v. Papaya Gaming Ltd. (S.D.N.Y., No. 24-cv-1646), where he is on the Kirkland team defending Papaya. The case originated with patent-related allegations between skill-gaming rivals but went to trial on Lanham Act/New York GBL false-advertising claims: a jury returned a $420 million verdict against Papaya in April 2026, and the court later awarded $719 million in disgorgement (post-trial briefing and appeal posture ongoing). His other reported matters (e.g., Sportscastr v. Genius Sports, Loop v. CDK Global) are antitrust/commercial cases rather than patent litigation.

PTAB / IPR. No IPR or PGR appearances by Leifer were located in any searchable PTAB source; the PTAB does not appear to be part of his practice.

Bar / education. J.D., magna cum laude, University of Michigan Law School (2015; Order of the Coif); B.A., Johns Hopkins (2008). Admitted in Illinois (2016), Massachusetts and New York (2017).

Note: The single tracked "untitled" defense appearance is consistent with his role on the Papaya defense team, but the case list does not name it; that attribution is inferred from his publicly listed Kirkland docket.