Duane Morris

I'll research Duane Morris's IP litigation practice before drafting.

Let me verify a few more specifics on outcomes and practice leaders.

Duane Morris LLP — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Firm overview. Duane Morris LLP is a full-service Am Law 100 firm headquartered at Duane Morris Plaza, 30 South 17th Street, Philadelphia, with roughly 29 offices across the U.S. (including the key patent venues of Delaware, E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex., N.D. Cal., and the D.C. metro area) plus London, Singapore, Shanghai, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Australia. The firm markets itself as "Am Law 100 since 2001"; third-party compilations place it around 82nd by U.S. gross revenue on the 2025 Am Law 200 and 74th by headcount on the 2025 NLJ 500, with 2025 revenue reported at approximately $758 million. Headcount figures differ by source — the firm's own materials say "more than 900 attorneys," while 2025–2026 directory and Wikipedia data put the figure nearer 742–750. It is a general-practice firm with a substantial IP group, not an IP boutique.

IP litigation specialty. Duane Morris's IP group reports 91 members, 54 registered patent attorneys, and 11 attorneys holding doctorates, and the firm states it is its third-largest practice group. Its litigation docket skews toward telecommunications and networking (Wi-Fi/MIMO, 5G RAN, multicarrier and DSL technologies, packet filtering, VOIP), network security/cybersecurity, semiconductors and RF front-end chips, software and consumer electronics/streaming, medical devices and orthopedics, and pharmaceutical/Hatch-Waxman work, with secondary activity in lighting, mechanical, and fintech matters. Chambers USA (2026) ranks the group Band 2 in Pennsylvania and credits it with representing AT&T, Verizon, and their vendors in E.D. Tex. patent actions and with acting for "market leaders in life sciences, consumer products, telecommunications and beverages." IAM Patent 1000 (2025) ranks the firm Silver for Georgia litigation, Bronze for California litigation, and Recommended for Pennsylvania prosecution; Legal 500 lists it as a leading IP/patents firm, and U.S. News gives top-tier national rankings in Patent Law and IP Litigation.

Side preference — defense-leaning with a strong PTAB petitioner practice. In the tracked matter list, the firm appears on the defendant side 21 times versus 9 plaintiff-side appearances. In district court it is predominantly a defense firm for operating companies and technology suppliers (Cisco, Verizon, AT&T, Roku, Netgear, Yahoo, Apple, Cirrus Logic, automotive OEMs). One important caveat: several of the "plaintiff" appearances are actually PTAB petitions where the firm's client is the petitioner (e.g., Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, Inc., Unified Patents v. Inspire Medical Systems, Fujirebio Diagnostics v. Quanterix, where the tracked role is "Attorney for Petitioner"), so the plaintiff-side count overstates true affirmative patent-enforcement work. Genuine patent-owner/enforcement representations do appear — Torchlight Technologies v. Daimler and the Kangxi declaratory-judgment action against Skyworks — but they are the minority of the book. Chambers describes the group as representing "both defendants and plaintiffs."

Notable cases and outcomes. The signature matter is Centripetal Networks, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (E.D. Va., No. 2:18-cv-94), where Duane Morris (L. Norwood Jameson, Matthew Gaudet, Christopher Tyson) defended Cisco. The October 2020 willful-infringement judgment of roughly $2.66–$3.25 billion — then reported as the largest patent award in U.S. history — was vacated by the Federal Circuit in 2022 on recusal grounds (38 F.4th 1025). On retrial before a new judge, Cisco obtained a December 2023 judgment of noninfringement on the remaining patents, a total defense win across all 11 asserted patents (reported as one of the largest patent defense victories on record); the Federal Circuit affirmed on April 29, 2026 (No. 24-2097). In Roku/Ioengine (W.D. Tex., Judge Albright), the firm won a complete noninfringement jury verdict in April 2024. In the Skyworks/Kangxi ITC dispute (Inv. No. 337-TA-1413), the firm represented Chinese chipmaker Kangxi Communication and its subsidiary Grand Chip Labs; following a January 2026 initial determination of no violation, Skyworks unconditionally withdrew both the ITC complaint and its parallel C.D. Cal. suit in April 2026. Other reported wins include the first summary judgment of noninfringement ever granted in the Eastern District of Texas (MyMail v. EarthLink/AOL/AT&T/Verizon, affirmed on appeal), a Federal Circuit-affirmed summary judgment for Cisco in Eon v. Cisco, and a defense verdict against a $30.4 million indirect-profits copyright claim in Wawrzynski v. H.J. Heinz. The group was named a 2024 Law360 Intellectual Property Practice Group of the Year.

PTAB / IPR practice. Duane Morris maintains a dedicated PTAB/IPR group and is notably active on the petitioner side. Firm materials state it was ranked the top firm representing petitioners before the PTAB under Unified Patents' institutional success index (2018–2025), and that Patexia's five-year analysis found it had the highest IPR institution percentage among the 15 most active petitioner firms; Lex Machina has listed it among the most active patent-litigation petitioners and defense firms. These figures are firm-published and self-selected source data and should be independently confirmed. Representative PTAB wins include the Cisco IPRs against Centripetal (claims held unpatentable, affirmed at 847 F. App'x 869/881), Ruckus Wireless IPRs against Hera Wireless MIMO patents and XR Communications beam-steering patents, TQ Delta IPRs for Comcast/Cox/Time Warner/Verizon/ARRIS, Unified Patents v. SynKloud, and the second-ever-filed PGR (PeroxyChem, PGR2016-00002). The firm also defends patent owners, including director-level discretionary denials obtained for NeXtGen Biologics.

Practice leaders. L. Norwood "Woody" Jameson (Atlanta) chairs the IP Practice Group; Matthew C. Gaudet (Atlanta) is vice chair and chairs the Patent Litigation Group; Anthony J. Fitzpatrick (Boston) leads a patent litigation division with deep life-sciences/Hatch-Waxman experience; and Patrick D. McPherson (Washington, D.C., office managing partner) heads the PTAB and IPR practice and reports having prepared 70-plus IPR/CBM petitions. Other frequently cited IP litigators include Christopher J. Tyson, John M. Baird, Philip W. Woo, Timothy R. Shannon, and Tia D. Fenton; Chambers USA 2026 individually ranks David J. Wolfsohn and Aleksander J. Goranin in Pennsylvania IP.

Note: rankings, filing volumes, and institution-rate figures above are drawn from firm press materials, Chambers/IAM/Legal 500 profiles, and third-party compilations (Am Law, NLJ, Wikipedia); they have not been independently audited. Headcount and revenue figures vary across sources and year-ends.