Veronica Manning

I'll research this attorney's background and verify the tracked case.

Veronica Faye Manning — Principal, McKool Smith (Houston)

Specialty / focus areas. Manning is a complex commercial litigator whose practice includes intellectual property litigation, with her documented patent work centered on standard-essential patent (SEP) and video-codec technology. Her tracked patent matter, Nokia Technologies Oy v. HP, Inc., asserts patents relating to the H.264 and H.265 video-decoding standards — including sub-pixel value interpolation and skip-coding-mode claims — and involves a parallel Section 337 complaint at the U.S. International Trade Commission against imports of video-capable laptops, desktops and related devices. Her firm bio otherwise emphasizes commercial and financial disputes, bankruptcy/Chapter 11 litigation, and matters spanning energy, automotive, financial services and construction, so patent litigation appears to be one part of a broader commercial practice rather than a full-time patent specialty. No pharma, life-sciences, or mechanical patent work is documented in the sources reviewed.

Side preference. The tracked data shows one plaintiff-side appearance and zero defendant-side appearances, and she is separately recognized by the Patexia ITC Intelligence Report (2026) among the top most active attorneys representing complainants — i.e., her patent work has been on the patent-holder/complainant side, for an operating SEP holder (Nokia) rather than an NPE/PAE. That said, her wider litigation record is mixed: she has defended clients in royalty, RICO and contract matters, so "plaintiff-leaning but not exclusively so" is the accurate characterization. She also represented Ericsson as patent owner in its global licensing dispute with Lenovo.

Firm context. Manning has spent her career at McKool Smith, joining the Houston office and promoted to Principal effective January 1, 2023. She has no other law-firm history identified in the sources; before practice she was a judicial intern for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Chief Justice Sherry Radack on the Texas First Court of Appeals.

Notable matters. Beyond Nokia v. HP, she was a member of the McKool Smith team (with co-counsel Alston & Bird) representing Ericsson in its global patent licensing dispute with Lenovo, which resolved in a confidential partial settlement in April 2025 involving a multi-year cross-license and withdrawal of pending litigation and administrative proceedings, including at the ITC. Her most prominent reported results are non-patent: a $30 million jury verdict for Twinwood Cattle Company (2021, with findings of fraud, alter ego and conspiracy); a $5 million breach-of-contract verdict against Santander Consumer USA (2022) upheld on appeal for Enterprise Financial Group; representation of Freddie Mac in a $1.75 billion auditor-liability suit against Deloitte; and a Fifth Circuit win on foreign sovereign immunity for the Government of Antigua and Barbuda in RICO actions arising from the Stanford Ponzi scheme.

PTAB / IPR experience. No PTAB appearances by Manning personally were found in the sources reviewed. McKool Smith does represent Nokia as patent owner in IPRs involving related patents (e.g., IPR2021-00038 on the '599 patent; IPR2024-00920, Amazon v. Nokia), but the powers of attorney name other McKool Smith attorneys (Hejny, Lipschitz, Verboncoeur, Kamprath, Stevenson). Her IPR/PGR footprint therefore cannot be confirmed and should be treated as undocumented rather than established.

Bar / education. Admitted in Texas (2015); U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Western Districts of Texas. J.D., magna cum laude, University of Houston Law Center (2015; Order of the Coif); M.A. in English, University of Houston (2012); B.A. in English and Anthropology, University of Delaware (2009). Recognized in Best Lawyers "Ones to Watch" (Commercial and Bankruptcy Litigation, 2021–2026), Benchmark Litigation "40 & Under" (2024), and Super Lawyers Rising Stars (2025).

Sourcing note: the description of her role as lead counsel in Nokia v. HP comes from the structured case list; the publicly filed Nokia pleadings and ITC submissions reviewed name other McKool Smith attorneys as lead counsel, so her specific case-level role could not be independently corroborated from those documents.