Thompson Coburn

I'll research Thompson Coburn's IP litigation practice and the tracked case before drafting.

Let me research the tracked case and key partners, plus PTAB activity.

Let me verify firm size/rankings, PTAB volume, and the lead partners' profiles.

Thompson Coburn LLP — patent litigation practice summary

Firm overview. Thompson Coburn LLP is a full-service, general-practice firm founded in 1929 and headquartered at One US Bank Plaza in St. Louis, Missouri. It operates seven U.S. offices — St. Louis (HQ), Belleville, Ill., Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. — and no international offices (Vault; U.S. News). It is a regional/national full-service firm rather than an IP boutique: The American Lawyer reported 377 full-time-equivalent attorneys and $254M revenue for 2022, with revenue per lawyer of roughly $673,000, and Vault places the firm in the AmLaw 250. It is not an AmLaw 100 firm. Chambers USA ranks the firm's Intellectual Property department in Band 2 for Missouri (2026).

IP litigation specialty. Chambers' department profile and the firm's own bios describe an IP group handling patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, with national district court, Federal Circuit, PTAB/TTAB, and ITC litigation experience, plus AI/generative-AI and e-commerce matters. Individual practitioner bios indicate the deepest patent-litigation bench sits in electrical engineering/software and telecommunications — Michael Parks lists mobile computing, cellular communications, GPS and interactive television, litigated in E.D. Tex., D. Del., and N.D. Ill.; Anthony Blum lists telecommunications, software, AI, cryptography, security and medical devices. The firm has also built out life sciences/pharma capability, including Hatch-Waxman and BPCIA work (Alfred D'Andrea, Jr.; Olga Berson, who joined from Morgan Lewis in Feb. 2025), alongside mechanical and industrial technologies (IP group chair Tom Polcyn, a mechanical engineer).

Side preference. On the tracked data, the firm skews defense-side: of one tracked appearance, 0 are plaintiff-side and 1 is defendant-side, with the firm acting as lead counsel. That single data point is consistent with the firm's public profile as a counselor/prosecutor for corporate IP owners that also defends operating companies when sued — not as a plaintiff-side shop for NPEs/PAEs. Because the tracked sample is only one matter, no broader plaintiff/defendant ratio should be inferred from it.

Most prominent tracked case. Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. et al. v. Ameren Corp. et al. — a patent-owner suit over mercury-emissions-control technology, filed July 17, 2024 in the E.D. Mo. (No. 4:24-cv-00980) and asserting six patents and 116 claims against Ameren Corp. and Union Electric Co. (d/b/a Ameren Missouri). Thompson Coburn attorneys Richard B. Walsh, Jr. and Robert M. Evans, Jr. entered appearances for the Ameren defendants and led the defense (motions to stay discovery and answer extensions were filed under Walsh's name). The case was transferred by the JPML into In re Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. Patent Litigation, MDL No. 3132 (S.D. Iowa), before Judge Stephen H. Locher, and remains pending — I found no public verdict, appellate ruling, or settlement. Note that parallel utility-side IPR petitions (e.g., IPR2025-00422/423/425 by Berkshire Hathaway Energy and PacifiCorp) were filed by other firms; I could not verify Thompson Coburn's involvement in those IPRs.

PTAB / IPR practice. Thompson Coburn attorneys do appear before the PTAB, and the firm markets post-grant capability. One verifiable example: Alan H. Norman, Anthony F. Blum, and David B. Jinkins filed the power of attorney for patent owner InMusic Brands in Sony Group Corp. v. InMusic Brands, Inc., IPR2023-00294 (U.S. Pat. 7,567,498). Blum's bio also states he manages IPRs and other post-grant proceedings. I did not find a public report establishing the firm's annual IPR/PGR filing volume, so I can't give a reliable scale figure — treat any volume claim as unverified.

Practice leaders to watch. Reliably sourced: Thomas A. Polcyn (chair of the IP practice group; Chambers USA Band 1, Missouri IP, 2012–2026; WTR 1000; mechanical/consumer-products patent and trademark portfolio focus); Alan H. Norman (Chambers USA Band 3, Missouri IP; patent infringement litigation; Best Lawyers "Litigation – Patent"); Anthony F. Blum (PTAB/IPR, ITC, Federal Circuit; telecom/software); and Michael A. Parks (patent and trademark litigation, E.D. Tex./D. Del./N.D. Ill.; former Kirkland & Ellis). Case counsel Richard B. Walsh, Jr. and Robert M. Evans, Jr. are the firm's named leads on the tracked ME2C/Ameren matter, but no firm bio page for either surfaced in my searches, so their specific patent-litigation credentials could not be independently verified.

Sources: the firm's Chambers USA department and lawyer profiles, thompsoncoburn.com attorney bios (Polcyn, Blum, Parks, D'Andrea), The American Lawyer 2023 revenue report (via firm PDF), Vault firm profile, U.S. News/Best Lawyers firm profile, RPX/Justia/UniCourt dockets for the ME2C/Ameren matter and MDL 3132, and USPTO PTAB filings (IPR2023-00294). Figures I could not verify from a reliable public source are flagged above.