Locke Lord

I'll research Locke Lord's IP litigation practice before drafting.

Let me verify the tracked cases and the firm's IP litigation/Tribunal practice claims.

Locke Lord LLP — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Firm overview. Locke Lord LLP was a full-service, Texas-rooted firm with a history of roughly 135 years, headquartered in Houston with a substantial Chicago and New York presence and approximately 20 offices including Florida, London and Brussels. Legacy firm revenue was reported at about $497.6 million for 2023 (Texas Lawbook 50/Texas Lawbook, drawing on Am Law data) and 233 lawyers in Texas, making it an Am Law 100-scale national commercial firm rather than an IP boutique or regional patent shop. Its stated market position was the middle market, with key sectors in energy, financial services, insurance and reinsurance, pharmaceutical/life sciences and private equity. Important caveat: Locke Lord ceased to exist as a standalone firm on January 1, 2025, when it combined with Troutman Pepper to form Troutman Pepper Locke LLP (1,600+ attorneys, 33 offices; the combined firm was described in reporting as approximately 28th in the Am Law 100). All tracked matters below pre-date or span that combination, and Law360 reported in January 2025 that more than a dozen Locke Lord IP professionals moved to Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney to launch its Chicago office — relevant to any assessment of team continuity.

IP litigation specialty. The tracked docket skews toward patent defense for technology and life sciences companies, consistent with the firm's own practice description (mechanical and electrical engineering, chemistry and computer science) plus a well-established Hatch-Waxman/ANDA practice for generic pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients. Third-party recognition is verifiable rather than self-asserted: IAM Patent 1000 recognized Locke Lord as a leading IP litigation firm in Illinois and New York in its 2024 edition, naming nine of its lawyers, and Best Law Firms (2024) gave the firm National Tier 1 status for Litigation – Intellectual Property, with Metropolitan Tier 1 rankings for Litigation – Patent and Patent Law. The Atlas Global matters show Wi-Fi/standard-essential-patent work in the Eastern District of Texas; other publicly listed matters involve semiconductors, LEDs, memory systems, automotive systems, consumer electronics and Section 337 ITC investigations.

Side preference. On the tracked record, Locke Lord is a defense-side firm: all four tracked appearances are as defendant, with zero plaintiff-side appearances in this dataset. That matches the firm's institutional posture of defending operating companies — a video game platform (Valve), a global electronics manufacturer (Samsung), a health insurer (Aetna, in the Sampo IP matter) and one additional uncaptioned defense matter. The sample is small, so treat this as a directional indicator rather than a full measure of the practice; Locke Lord's own attorneys publicly describe work "as plaintiff's counsel and as defense counsel," and its pharma group historically represented both brand holders and ANDA filers. One tracked entry appears in the data only as "Untitled case" (Charles S. Baker, lead counsel) and cannot be characterized further.

Notable tracked matters. Atlas Global Technologies LLC v. Valve Corporation (E.D. Tex.) is the most prominent tracked matter, with Adam H. Charnes as lead counsel; it is part of a related family of Atlas Global Wi-Fi SEP suits (the companion TP-Link action, No. 2:21-cv-00430-JRG-RSP, went to trial in 2023 and turned in part on FRAND counterclaims that the court resolved on summary judgment in July 2023 — I have not verified the specific outcome in the Valve case). Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al. (Mark Hannemann, lead counsel) is a defense matter against a well-known non-practicing-entity plaintiff; public outcome information was not verifiable in my searches. Sampo IP, LLC v. Aetna Inc. (Michael P. McKinnon) follows the same NPE-vs-operating-company defense pattern. Firm-published results include a January 2023 defense verdict for Hunting Titan in a Southern District of Texas patent jury trial and an ITC Section 337 final determination for Vego Garden. Separately, the successor firm Troutman Pepper Locke announced in August 2026 a $96.4 million jury verdict and injunction for Shoals Technologies Group — a plaintiff-side, multi-forum (ITC/PTAB/district court) result that should be attributed to the combined firm, not to legacy Locke Lord.

PTAB / IPR practice. Locke Lord maintained a recognized post-grant practice, including a Chicago team (Steven Trybus, Wasim Bleibel, Hugh Balsam) that secured a USPTO decision in favor of the Broad Institute in the CRISPR patent interference — a genuinely notable public win — and lawyers with stated experience in IPRs, PGRs, interferences and Federal Circuit appeals. The firm also published client analysis on IPR estoppel after California Institute of Technology v. Broadcom (Fed. Cir. 2022). I found no reliable public report quantifying Locke Lord's IPR/PGR filing volume, so no scale figure is offered here; post-merger, the combined firm has a visible post-grant presence (e.g., its "Post-Grant Podcast" series on IPR/PGR discretionary denial and estoppel).

Key practice leaders. Alan Clement (New York) chaired the firm's Intellectual Property Department. Charles S. Baker (Houston/Austin) and Charles E. Phipps (Dallas) were Co-Chairs of the IP Litigation Practice Group. Mark Hannemann (New York), a Kenyon & Kenyon and Shearman & Sterling alumnus who joined in 2022, is the most visible first-chair patent trial lawyer in the tracked set. Steven Trybus (Chicago) leads the pharma/biotech and post-grant side, and Peter Fill (New York) co-chaired the Patent Strategies practice. Recognition of Baker (Chambers USA, Texas: Intellectual Property, 2007–2023) and Hannemann/Clement/Phipps (IAM Patent 1000) is sourced to firm and IAM materials; no independent verification of individual win-loss records was performed.