Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg

I'll research the firm's public profile before writing.

Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg LLP — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Firm overview. Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg LLP ("AMS") is a Washington, D.C. IP and international trade boutique founded in 1981, headquartered at 1133 Connecticut Avenue NW. It operates a single office and is small by any measure — Martindale lists roughly 19 lawyers in the D.C. office, and third-party business-data aggregators (ZoomInfo) report headcount in the 11–50 range with revenue under $10 million, figures that should be treated as unofficial estimates rather than verified financials. The firm does not appear in the AmLaw 200 and I found no verifiable AmLaw ranking. It is best characterized as a specialized Washington regulatory/litigation boutique rather than a general BigLaw IP practice; its own 2019 press release states it has received top-tier rankings from Chambers, Managing Intellectual Property, and Legal 500, but I could not independently confirm the specific tier or year from a Chambers or Legal 500 source.

IP litigation specialty. AMS's core franchise is Section 337 litigation at the U.S. International Trade Commission — unfair import practices, patent and trademark infringement at the border, domestic-industry economics, and exclusion-order remedies — alongside customs and international trade regulation. Its own representative-matter materials and ITC filings show past work spanning wireless communications chips and chipsets, semiconductors and flash memory, LCD modules, consumer electronics and mobile devices, medical devices, tires, batteries, and food/chemical products, with clients including Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, NXP, Canon, Seiko Epson, ResMed, and LEGO. Its district court patent work is comparatively thin and is generally supplemental to ITC engagements, frequently in a local-counsel capacity.

Side preference. On the tracked data, AMS appears exclusively on the plaintiff side (2 of 2 appearances, 0 defendant-side) and exclusively as local counsel. Both tracked entries — Intellectual Ventures v. Capital One and Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Financial Corporation — are the same underlying NPE-versus-bank patent dispute litigated in two districts, so the sample reflects one client relationship rather than a repeat plaintiff-side pattern. Publicly, the firm has acted for complainants (Apple in the ITC smartphone cases, Energizer, Pioneer, and the NPE Neodron) while also appearing for respondents in ITC investigations, so it is not a one-sided shop; the tracked dataset is simply too small to support a plaintiff/prosecution or defense-side characterization.

Notable tracked matters. In the E.D. Va. action (No. 1:13-cv-00740, Judge Trenga), the court construed the asserted claims in December 2013 and granted summary judgment in April 2014 holding the asserted claims of the '137 and '382 patents ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and indefinite; the Federal Circuit affirmed at 792 F.3d 1363 (2015). In the parallel D. Md. action (No. 8:14-cv-00111, Judge Grimm), Capital One's antitrust counterclaims proceeded while the patent claims were resolved, and the Federal Circuit again affirmed at 850 F.3d 1332 (2017), ending IV's infringement claims. AMS's role was local counsel; the substantive lead work was handled by Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, and Troutman Sanders. Net-net, the tracked matters were not wins for the AMS side of the "v." — a relevant caveat for anyone reading the plaintiff-side count as a successful NPE practice.

PTAB / IPR practice. I found no public evidence that AMS maintains a notable IPR/PGR filing or defense practice, and no public report supporting meaningful PTAB volume. The PTAB work in the IV v. Capital One dispute was handled by other firms. Treat the firm as an ITC/district court litigation shop on this record, not a post-grant practice.

Practice leaders. Verifiable names from firm and industry sources: V. James Adduci II (founding and managing partner 1981–2019, still on the executive committee), Tom M. Schaumberg (longtime Section 337 litigator and editor of the ABA's A Lawyer's Guide to Section 337 Investigations Before the U.S. International Trade Commission), Louis S. Mastriani, and Deanna Tanner Okun (managing partner from January 2020; former ITC Chairman and Commissioner, repeatedly named to Managing Intellectual Property's Top 250 Women in IP). Note a data caveat on counsel: the tracked attorney, "Thomas Richard Burns, Jr.," matches a name listed at AMS in third-party directories, but public bios for Thomas "Buddy" Burns describe him as having left AMS for Bartkowski PLLC in 2021, and a separate Thomas R. Burns is a biotech patent litigator at Marshall Gerstein. I could not verify which individual is the AMS local counsel of record, and the name should not be attributed without confirming the docket entry. Separately, a 2002 attorney-fee dispute arising from Lans v. Digital Equipment Corp., 252 F.3d 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2001) included allegations of misconduct against the firm in a filing by opposing counsel; I could not verify the disposition of that fee litigation and flag it only as a documented public dispute, not a finding.