Patent Litigation Support

Our team has helped secure 2,100+ issued patents and 1,000+ registered trademarks, with client work spanning 36 U.S. states and international filings in 27 countries.

Call NK Patent Law at (919) 348-2194 or contact us online to discuss your patent dispute strategy. 

• Infringement analysis and claim charting against an accused product or process
• Invalidity analysis and prior-art searching under Section 102 (novelty) and Section 103 (obviousness)
• Claim construction analysis and prosecution-history review
• Pre-assertion analysis before a demand letter goes out
• Demand-letter response analysis for companies accused of infringement
• Inter Partes Review (IPR) before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)
• Ex Parte Reexamination
• Support to litigation counsel in federal district court matters and International Trade Commission Section 337 investigations
• Technical expert support and continuation strategy while a dispute is pending

The American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) surveys patent litigation costs every two years in its Report of the Economic Survey. In the 2023 survey, the median cost for a defendant to take a patent case through trial and appeal ranged from about $600,000 when less than $1 million was at stake to about $3.6 million when more than $25 million was at stake. Those are medians, which means half of all cases cost more. And that’s just one side’s bill for one case, regardless of whether you win or lose.

Then there’s the timeline. Patent cases commonly take two to four years to reach trial, depending heavily on the district, and an appeal to the Federal Circuit adds another year or more. A dispute that starts today could still be running when your current product is two generations old.

The legal bills are the most obvious cost. But most companies that have been through patent litigation will tell you that the disruption and distraction cost more. Discovery consumes hundreds of engineering hours. Your executives prepare for and sit through depositions. Product decisions freeze while everyone waits to learn how a court will read a claim term. And if you’re raising money or heading toward an acquisition during the case, the litigation becomes a diligence item that every investor and acquirer will price in. Investors generally aren’t in a hurry to fund litigation.

This is why the best patent dispute is usually the one that never gets filed. Every alternative gets cheaper the earlier you take the dispute seriously. A design-around costs less than a license. A license negotiated from a position of knowledge costs less than one negotiated under a filing deadline. And all of them cost less than trial.

The picture in most people’s heads is a courtroom. The reality is more spread out, and knowing the map changes how you think about who you need.

District court, and why venue matters so much

Patent infringement suits are filed in federal district court, and venue (which district hears the case) makes a big difference in patent cases. Districts differ dramatically in how fast they move, how their local patent rules structure the case, how willing they are to pause a case while the Patent Office reviews the patent, and how their juries tend to see patent disputes. A case in one district can reach trial in eighteen months; the same case in another can take four years.
Since the Supreme Court’s TC Heartland decision in 2017, which construed the patent venue statute at 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), a domestic company can only be sued for patent infringement where it’s incorporated or where it has a regular and established place of business and has allegedly infringed. Although that ruling limited the options for where a patent case can be filed, patent owners still choose among the districts available to them. On the flip side, companies that receive a sufficiently threatening demand letter accusing them of infringement can sometimes file a declaratory judgment action first, in their own preferred venue, asking the court to declare the patent invalid or not infringed. That risk affects how carefully patent owners write demand letters, and it’s one of the first things to think about on either side of one.

The Patent Office, where many validity fights get decided

A large share of patent validity disputes aren’t decided by juries at all. They’re decided at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in proceedings like Inter Partes Review (IPR) before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and Ex Parte Reexamination before the Office’s examining corps.

An IPR runs on a statutory clock (twelve months from institution to final written decision), is decided by administrative patent judges rather than by lay juries, who rarely have any patent background, and typically costs a fraction of district court litigation. District courts frequently pause their cases while a parallel Patent Office proceeding is happening, which means the Patent Office answer often comes first and settles the dispute.

If you last looked at this area a few years ago, the rules have changed. The USPTO has significantly tightened access to IPR, with institution rates falling from roughly two-thirds of petitions to 50% in fiscal year 2025 and 39% in fiscal year 2026 through July, driven largely by discretionary denials, and the USPTO Director now personally decides whether petitions go forward. Challengers have responded by turning to Ex Parte Reexamination in record numbers. The USPTO’s own PTAB statistics page is a great resource for following current trends.

Why does this matter? Because these are USPTO proceedings, governed by USPTO rules that are currently evolving, and the practitioners who work in them are registered patent practitioners. Winning there depends less on courtroom experience than on deep familiarity with how patents get examined, amended, and challenged inside the Patent Office.

The ITC, briefly

One more venue to be aware of. When infringing products are imported into the United States, a patent owner can bring a Section 337 investigation at the International Trade Commission under 19 U.S.C. § 1337. ITC investigations move fast by litigation standards, often reaching a decision in under two years, and the remedy is an exclusion order that stops products at the border, which can be incredibly powerful. For companies whose competitors manufacture overseas, the ITC is sometimes the most consequential forum of all.

When you look at how patent cases are litigated, you’ll see two distinct jobs.

The first is trial advocacy. Managing discovery, taking depositions, arguing motions, picking juries, cross-examining witnesses. This is the world of litigators, and patent cases need them the way any high-stakes case does.

The second is the technical merits. What do the claims actually cover, and how should each term be construed? What does the prosecution history say about what the applicant gave up to get the patent? What prior art exists, and does it invalidate the claims? Does the accused product actually map onto the claim elements? Should some of this fight happen at the Patent Office instead of in court? This work requires knowledge of the USPTO and the intricacies of patent law. You need to understand how examiners think, how claims get amended, what the prosecution history means, and how PTAB procedure works.

Large firms usually bundle both of these disciplines under one roof, and for bet-the-company cases that’s often the right call. They have great patent litigators and a deep bench of attorneys to handle the day-to-day demands of the case. But plenty of mid-sized companies already have a general litigator they trust and lack only the patent-side depth to pair with them. This is the role NK Patent Law fills.

In most disputes, the patent-side work comes first. How much of it, and what kind, depends on where the dispute stands. Maybe nothing has happened yet and you’d like to keep it that way, maybe a letter has arrived, or maybe you’re the one considering sending it.

You’re pre-launch, pre-funding, or pre-acquisition

This is where you have some flexibility. A freedom-to-operate analysis evaluates whether your product can be made and sold without infringing active patents, and portfolio review makes sure the rights you’re representing to investors actually hold up. Diligence teams in funding rounds and acquisitions ask these questions whether or not you’ve answered them, so it’s good to know first. Our Freedom-to-Operate Deep Dive covers this in depth.

You received a demand letter claiming you infringe

You’re selling a product, and a competitor has sent you a letter claiming that your product infringes their patent. Don’t ignore it, and don’t respond before you’ve had a chance to analyze the specific claim in the demand letter. Everything downstream (design-around, license negotiation, a validity challenge at the Patent Office, or a defense) depends on two questions: is the patent valid, and does your product actually fall within its claims? That assessment is patent-technical work, and it comes before any strategic response. There’s also an up-front housekeeping piece. A credible claim can trigger a duty to preserve documents, so suspend auto-deletion for the relevant people and projects. We cover the anatomy of infringement claims on our Intellectual Property Disputes webpage.

You want to stop a competitor from infringing

You have a patent, and you believe a competitor is infringing your patent. You’ll want to assess the strength of your claim before sending a demand letter. A claim broad enough to cover your competitor’s product may be broad enough to be invalidated over prior art, and a weak assertion invites a validity challenge, or a declaratory judgment suit in your competitor’s favorite forum, in return. A pre-assertion analysis (claim charts, prior-art analysis, a hard look at your own prosecution history) determines whether a demand letter will start a licensing negotiation or a two-front war.

You’re already in litigation

Even with litigation counsel engaged, the technical merits of a patent-infringement case generally require their own discipline running alongside the courtroom work: claim construction analysis, prior-art searching, invalidity and infringement charting, prosecution-history review, support for technical experts, and strategy for any parallel Patent Office proceeding. This is the stage that involves a courtroom, and even here, a substantial portion of the work that decides the case happens outside the courtroom. NK Patent Law works alongside a company’s litigation counsel on exactly this scope.

Licensing, due diligence, and transactions

• Patent due diligence for acquisitions, licensing, and financings, including evaluation of in-licensed and out-licensed portfolios
• Assessment of pending or threatened disputes as a diligence item in a deal
• Portfolio review to confirm that the rights being represented to investors hold up
• Continuation strategy to keep claim coverage aligned with a product as it evolves

Technical backgrounds

The firm’s patent attorneys and patent agents hold technical degrees in fields including electrical engineering, software, semiconductors, biotechnology, chemistry, and mechanical systems. Managing Partner Doug Meier began his career as an electrical engineer writing software for NASA’s Space Shuttle Program before becoming a patent attorney, a technical foundation that helps the firm evaluate infringement and validity questions in complex systems without extensive translation from inventors. Related practice areas include artificial intelligence, mechanical, chemistry, and biotechnology patent work.

Why companies choose NK Patent Law for patent disputes

• Prosecution depth where validity fights are now decided, as post-grant challenges shift from the PTAB toward reexamination
• Technical degrees across the firm, so infringement and validity questions get evaluated directly rather than translated
• A defined role that pairs with existing litigation counsel instead of competing with it
• Analysis before posture, so the decision to fight, license, design around, or walk away is made with the merits in hand
• Business-partner-level attention from experienced patent attorneys and patent agents, without large-firm pricing

NK Patent Law has been recognized by Legal 500 U.S. Elite, Best Lawyers in America for Intellectual Property, Business North Carolina Legal Elite, and the Chambers USA Regional Spotlight Guide.

If you do need a litigator, what to look for

Sometimes the answer really is a litigator or a patent litigator. If a complaint has been filed against you, or negotiation has failed and you’re ready to enforce, here are a few things that separate the right fit from an expensive mistake.

Ask about actual patent trial experience. Nearly all patent cases settle. Many lawyers with “patent litigation” on their bio have managed cases that settled but have never tried one to verdict. Settlement experience is genuinely valuable (because most patent cases settle, you want a litigator who plans for that rather than staffing for a trial that won’t happen), but if your case is one of the few that goes the distance, you want someone who has been there.

Ask how they handle damages. This one often gets overlooked, but patent damages are their own specialty and the numbers swing enormously based on how damages are analyzed. Cases can be won or lost in dollar terms, even when liability is close, on reasonable royalty analysis, lost profits, apportioning the value of the patented feature against everything else in the product, selecting and defending damages experts, and surviving the other side’s challenges to your expert’s methodology. A litigator who treats damages as an afterthought to be handled by whatever expert is available can cost you more than their fees. If you’re asserting, weak damages work caps your recovery. If you’re defending, damages can be a powerful shield, because a well-built challenge to the patent owner’s damages theory can shrink the case enough to settle it.

Ask about their technical fluency and how they staff the patent-side merits work. In-house, or by teaming with patent specialists? There’s no wrong answer, but you want a considered strategy, because the merits piece is half the case.

And ask how they think about the Patent Office. If a litigator doesn’t have a view on whether your dispute belongs partly at the PTAB, or hasn’t tracked the latest trends there, you may be missing out on avenues that can save you time, money, and headaches.

So, do you need a patent litigator?

Sometimes, yes. If a complaint has been filed against you, or negotiation has failed and you’ve made the business decision to enforce, you need a litigator, and the questions in the previous section will help you choose well.

Most companies asking the question aren’t there yet. They have a letter, a suspicion, or a launch on the calendar. What they need first is the analysis. Is the patent valid? Does the product actually fall within the claims? What’s the realistic exposure, and what are the off-ramps? Hiring a litigator before that analysis exists usually means paying litigation rates for patent work, and it can lock you into a fighting posture before you know whether the fight is worth having.

Whether to fight is a business decision. That business decision is based on expected damages against expected cost, disruption against outcome, the value of the patent against the value of just moving on. Most patent disputes end in a license, a settlement, or a walk-away once both sides understand the strength of the rights involved. The companies that come out ahead are the ones that did that math before the other side did.