Garteiser HoneCPA

Firm overview. Garteiser Honea, PLLC (d/b/a Garteiser Honea, P.C. in some jurisdictions) is a small, self-described "IP trial boutique" headquartered at 119 W. Ferguson St. in Tyler, Texas — across from the Eastern District of Texas courthouse — with a second office footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area (San Rafael/San Francisco), where the firm originated before opening Tyler in 2013 (ghiplaw.com). Founded by Randall T. Garteiser and Christopher A. Honea, both patent-litigation alumni of Quinn Emanuel and McKool Smith, the firm is not a BigLaw or AmLaw-listed entity; no Chambers, Vault, or AmLaw ranking was located in public sources. Directory data (Brandfetch) puts the firm in the roughly 11–50-employee range, consistent with a regional/small IP litigation shop.

IP litigation specialty. The firm's practice is almost entirely litigation — one partner described current work as "at least 95 percent" IP litigation (deposition transcript, Valve Corp. v. Rothschild, W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-01016). Case history is concentrated in software and electronics: digital watermarking, DRM and secure-transaction systems (Blue Spike), mobile/wearable device data-capture software (Cellspin Soft), cloud-based media storage and delivery/streaming (Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems), and wireless/licensing-era disputes (Wi-LAN, GPNE). The firm's own materials also cite experience in oil-and-gas and life-sciences disputes (ghiplaw.com practice pages).

Side preference. The firm publicly states it handles "whether prosecuting or defending." In the authoritative tracked docket, its one appearance is plaintiff-side (Activemap LLC v. Unknown Defendant, lead counsel Christopher A. Honea). The broader public record strongly skews plaintiff-side representation of patent monetization/assertion entities — Blue Spike, Cellspin Soft, RBDS, GPNE, and Wi-LAN — in E.D. Texas and N.D. California (CourtListener/RPX filings), though the firm also has defense work (e.g., iShopUSA, Roche Molecular Systems, per its website). The tracked sample is too small to be statistically meaningful, but the firm's visible profile is NPE/plaintiff-side assertion.

Notable cases. Its most prominent engagements are large assertion campaigns: Blue Spike LLC v. Texas Instruments, Inc. et al. (E.D. Tex. No. 6:12-cv-499); the Cellspin Soft suits against Fitbit, Nike, Under Armour, Garmin, Fossil, and Nikon (N.D. Cal., 2017) and later ByteDance (E.D. Tex.); and the Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems campaign against ADT, Samsara, and Plex, which resolved through stays, settlements, and with-prejudice dismissals (CourtListener dockets). Speech Transcription LLC v. Exabeam (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00605) ended in a stipulated with-prejudice dismissal after ~424 days (PatSnap litigation analysis). The firm's website also claims partner involvement in the i4i v. Microsoft $290M verdict and Stanford v. Roche (131 S. Ct. 2188) — matters handled largely at McKool Smith/Quinn Emanuel before the firm's founding, so these should be attributed to partner résumés rather than firm verdicts. Separately, Garteiser was individually deposed and subject to a sanctions motion in Valve Corp. v. Rothschild (W.D. Wash.), an ongoing dispute over RBDS enforcement conduct.

PTAB/IPR practice and key partners. No reliable public source indicates a notable IPR/PGR practice; the firm's profile is district-court trial litigation, with only passing references to stayed reexaminations in the Cellspin matters. Key partners, reliably sourced from firm announcements and court filings, are: Randall T. Garteiser (co-founder; UT Law; chemical-engineering background; former Quinn Emanuel; clerk to Judge James Ware); Christopher A. Honea (co-founder; electrical engineer; former McKool Smith, including work on i4i v. Microsoft; lead counsel in the tracked Activemap matter); and Tom Fasone III (partner since 2019, ex-McKool Smith, with ITC experience).