Carrington Coleman Sloman & Blumenthal

I'll research this firm before drafting.

Let me dig into the tracked cases and firm size metrics.

Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal LLP — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Firm overview. Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal LLP ("Carrington Coleman") is a Dallas-headquartered firm founded in 1970, with its principal office at 901 Main Street, Dallas, and a secondary Texas office in Longview (per firm and MSI Global Alliance announcements). It is a regional/commercial firm rather than a national BigLaw practice: the firm's own site describes a bench of "70+ attorneys," and it appears on Vault's Top 150 Under 150 list (2026) rather than the AmLaw 100/200. Chambers USA 2026 ranks it Band 2 in Texas (Dallas/Fort Worth & Surrounds) for General Commercial Litigation, and Legal 500's 2026 U.S. guide places it Tier 2 nationwide in General Commercial Disputes – Mid-Market ($0–250m). No reliable public revenue or headcount figure beyond the firm's own "70+" self-description was located; third-party aggregator estimates vary too widely to rely on.

IP litigation specialty. The IP group describes itself as a focused, "tight-knit" patent, trademark, trade secret and copyright team, and its bench is defense-oriented patent litigation. Technology areas with verified depth include semiconductors (fabrication, wafer inspection, chip packaging, network processors, memory/storage) and telecommunications/wireless standards work, plus software, GUIs, network architecture and security, encryption, payment systems, and — through partner Mark C. Howland's practice — oil-and-gas technologies such as seismic data acquisition and downhole tools. The firm's 2021 addition of registered patent lawyer Dr. Chad Ray added pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices, chemicals and automotive components, and his practice expressly includes PTAB work. The practice description also notes automotive, software and pharma representations generally.

Side preference. The tracked portfolio is predominantly defense-side: 4 defendant-side appearances versus 1 plaintiff-side, and the firm's own representative matters read as operating-company defense. The recurring theme is defending established operating companies — most visibly banks, plus semiconductor manufacturers, retailers, a toy manufacturer and an automotive dealer/distributor — against infringement claims by non-practicing entities. The single plaintiff-side tracked entry is a declaratory-judgment posture (banks affirmatively challenging Intellectual Ventures' patents), which is functionally the same defensive strategy rather than NPE/PAE monetization work. There is no indication in the tracked data that the firm prosecutes patent cases for PAEs.

Notable tracked cases and outcomes. The centerpiece is the Intellectual Ventures bank campaign. Carrington Coleman's Mark Howland represented Compass Bank in Compass Bank v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC and related bank-side proceedings tied to the Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc. appeals. The firm's representative-matter description states it obtained a stay of a five-patent suit over online-banking operations pending IPR, with three asserted patents resulting in final written decisions holding all asserted claims unpatentable; the PTAB's Compass Bank v. Intellectual Ventures II, IPR2014-00724, final written decision (Nov. 17, 2015) invalidated claims 18–31 of the '574 public-key encryption patent. The Federal Circuit affirmed cancellation of the asserted claims in a nonprecedential per curiam judgment entered Dec. 9, 2016, with Howland listed as appellate counsel for Compass Bank. On the defense side, the firm's Brian Patrick Shaw Jr. led the defense of Gulliver USA in Context Directions LLC v. Gulliver USA, Inc. (E.D. Tex., No. 2:25-cv-01005), an NPE suit asserting two vehicle-context/location patents against dozens of Nissan, Toyota and Lexus models before Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap; the case was resolved by joint dismissal with prejudice roughly 140 days after filing (Feb. 20, 2026), with no publicly disclosed damages. Note that the tracked list includes inconsistent plaintiff/defendant tagging across the Compass Bank matters, so side attribution for those entries should be treated with some caution.

PTAB / IPR practice. The firm does maintain post-grant practice: its IP practice page expressly lists challenging and defending patents before the PTAB, including IPRs, alongside ITC work. The verified example is the bank-side IPR campaign against Intellectual Ventures (IPR2014-00724 for Compass Bank, and the companion proceedings involving IBM and the bank group). I found no public report quantifying the firm's IPR/PGR filing volume, and no PTAB statistics aggregator data confirming a "notable" filing count — so scale claims should not be made.

Key partners. Mark C. Howland is the most prominent IP litigator, joining from Jones Day's IP practice; he appears in 3 of the 5 tracked cases and is the firm's principal patent-litigation contact. Samuel E. Joyner, a former name partner at Dallas technology-litigation boutique Ross Joyner, joined with Howland to build the patent practice. Dr. Chad Ray, a registered patent lawyer with a chemistry Ph.D. and prior stints at Munck Wilson Mandala and Jenner & Block, anchors pharma/medical-device/PTAB work. Brian Patrick Shaw Jr., a business trial and appellate lawyer, served as lead counsel on the Context Directions defense. Managing partner Monica Latin leads the firm commercially but is a general commercial litigator, not an IP specialist.