Nixon Peabody

I'll research Nixon Peabody's IP litigation practice before drafting.

Good foundation. Now let me verify specific cases and the PTAB practice.

Let me verify the firm's footprint and a few notable case outcomes.

Nixon Peabody LLP — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Firm overview. Nixon Peabody LLP is a full-service, Boston-headquartered firm (53 State Street) formed by the 1999 merger of Nixon, Hargrave, Devans & Doyle and Peabody & Brown. Law.com's 2025 data lists roughly 610 attorneys and 2024 gross revenue of about $621 million, ranking it #90 in the 2025 Am Law rankings and #112 on the Global 200; the 2025 NLJ 500 places it #87 by U.S. size. It maintains 13–16 offices including Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Albany, Buffalo, Manchester, Providence and Rochester, plus London, Hong Kong (Nixon Peabody CWL) and Shanghai. This is AmLaw 100/200 general-practice work, not an IP boutique: IP is one practice within a litigation department of nearly 400 lawyers (firm press release, June 2026). Headcount and office counts vary slightly across public sources.

IP litigation specialty. The firm describes its IP group as covering the full lifecycle — patent mining, prosecution and registration, litigation and transactions — led since recent years by Los Angeles partner Seth D. Levy. It is Tier 1 nationally in Best Law Firms 2025 for Litigation–Intellectual Property, Patent Law and Trademark Law, is recommended in IAM Patent 1000 for both prosecution and litigation (2012–2025), and is ranked in Legal 500 U.S. for trade secrets. The tracked docket is technology-diverse: data center cooling and thermal management (the Valtrus/KPI campaigns), wearable optical biosensors (Omni MedSci), consumer wireless electronics (Samsung), juvenile products (Baby Jogger v. UPPAbaby and Evenflo), dental and medical devices (Solmetex), and orthobiologics (LifeNet Health v. Zimmer Biomet). Firm materials also cite chemistry and chemical engineering, 3-D vision, telecom/network architecture, QR-code and internet technologies, and AI counseling.

Side preference. The tracked appearances skew defense-side — roughly 16 defendant-side versus 9 plaintiff-side roles — but this is a genuine two-way practice rather than a pure operating-company defense shop. Defense work is concentrated in coordinated campaigns: the Valtrus/KPI assertion wave against data center operators (NTT Data Services, TierPoint, Lumen Technologies, Prime Data Centers, Netrality Properties), plus Solmetex, Baby Jogger and Zimmer Biomet. On the other side, the firm runs patent-owner and monetization work — most visibly for Omni MedSci, Inc., which it represents as patent owner in district court and at the PTAB, and for Vertiv Corporation as declaratory-judgment plaintiff against Valtrus. That is a licensing/enforcement posture, though the firm's practice description emphasizes defending competitors as much as enforcing rights.

Notable matters. Publicly citable highlights: Omni MedSci v. Apple produced a significant Federal Circuit standing decision (7 F.4th 1148 (Fed. Cir. 2021)) on whether university IP-policy language effected a present assignment; Nixon Peabody's involvement in the Omni MedSci matters is documented in PTAB filings and in 2024 appellate briefing signed by firm attorneys, while the 2021 merits appeal was argued by other counsel. Vertiv Corp. v. Valtrus Innovations Ltd. (E.D. Tex.) is a declaratory-judgment action in which the firm litigated whether a supplier's customer indemnity obligations create DJ jurisdiction — briefing was active through 2025 and trial scheduling ran into 2026. Valtrus Innovations Ltd. v. NTT Data Services, LLC is the lead coordinated defense, with Timothy P. Maloney as lead trial counsel. Other tracked matters include Unified Patents v. MemoryWeb, Baby Jogger v. Monahan Products (UPPAbaby), and LifeNet Health v. Zimmer Biomet. I could not verify specific verdicts, settlements or affirmances in these district court matters from public sources, so no outcomes are asserted here.

PTAB / IPR practice. Post-grant work is a named piece of the group's offering, and Chambers lists Maloney for post-grant proceedings, describing a "strong track record in inter partes review." I found no public, firm-level IPR/PGR filing volume statistic, so scale should not be quoted from these materials. The clearest evidence of volume is client-specific: firm attorneys are lead and back-up counsel of record for patent owner Omni MedSci across a parallel cluster of challenges (IPR2025-01249 through -01254, PGR2025-00063 and -00064, and IPR2025-01583), with Jennifer Hayes as lead counsel. The docket also includes Unified Patents v. MemoryWeb and Unified Patents v. Solmetex, where the firm appears on the patent-owner side.

Practice leaders. Seth D. Levy (Los Angeles) leads the Intellectual Property practice; Daniel J. Schwartz (Chicago) is deputy leader and previously headed IP litigation; Timothy P. Maloney (Chicago) is the firm's most frequently appearing patent litigator in the tracked data and is Chambers-ranked for patent litigation and post-grant work; Jennifer Hayes (Los Angeles) is a partner and the PTAB lead on the Omni MedSci proceedings. Maloney, Sasha Rao, Brandon Stroy, Karl Fink, Elizabeth Chiaviello and others joined in a 2024 IP hiring push that the firm said added five partners, eight counsel and 14 associates.

Sources: nixonpeabody.com (IP practice page, press releases); Law.com / NLJ 500 / Global 200 firm data; Chambers profiles (Timothy P. Maloney); Best Law Firms, IAM Patent 1000, Legal 500, Managing IP listings as published on the firm site; PTAB filings and E.D. Tex. docket records via CourtListener and PTAB docket aggregators; Federal Circuit opinions (Apple v. Omni MedSci, 2023-1034; Omni MedSci v. Apple, 7 F.4th 1148).