Overview
Kevin Littman is a partner and intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP where his practice emphasizes all aspects of intellectual property litigation. He has worked on patent litigation in a variety of technologies, including medical devices, computer software and consumer products. The subject matter of his litigation work has included LED lighting, software and business methods for administering life insurance policies, machine vision technology, non-woven fabrics, bone suture anchors, safety devices for hypodermic needles and similar instruments, breast pumps, dust barriers, laboratory instrumentation, embroidery processes, voice recognition software, software to monitor the health and performance of medical instruments, automated reading software and Web analytics software. Mr. Littman is a member of the Intellectual Property Litigation Practice.
Mr. Littman has been involved in patent litigation proceedings before federal district courts across the country, as well as in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He also has worked on trademark and copyright litigation, and complex litigation matters outside the field of intellectual property. These cases included a breach of contract action by a university against certain professors regarding inventions they developed while at the university; a multi-million dollar supply contract dispute concerning a rare metal used in the production of electronic components; and a breach of warranty and fraud case against the sellers of various private companies.
Before joining Foley, Mr. Littman was an associate with Lowrie, Lando & Anastasi, LLP and Fish & Richardson P.C. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Margaret M. Morrow, United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Recognition
Mr. Littman has been selected for inclusion in the 2008 and 2010 - 2011 Massachusetts Super Lawyers-Rising Stars® editions for his intellectual property litigation work.
Education
Mr. Littman earned his J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif, and was a managing editor of the UCLA Law Review. He earned his B.S., magna cum laude, from Tufts University.
Community Engagement
Mr. Littman’s pro bono experience includes political asylum representation and service in the Lawyer-for-a-Day program with the Northeast Housing Court. He serves as co-director of the judicial component of the Massachusetts YMCA Youth & Government program.
Admissions
Mr. Littman is admitted to practice in New York before state and federal courts in Massachusetts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Representative Experience
- Oasis Research, LLC v. Adrive, LLC, et. al. Represented Carbonite in the Eastern District of Texas against a claim brought by Oasis Research, LLC, a non-practicing entity that was formed for the purposes of enforcing the patents. We secured a separate jury trial on inventorship issues, in advance of resolution of the other liability issues in the case. In March 2013, we secured a jury verdict for Carbonite that each of the four asserted patents is invalid.
- Cognex v. MVTec. Represented 18 of 22 respondents in a three patent ITC investigation concerning machine vision software filed by Cognex Corporation. Cognex had initially sued MVTec on nine patents in the District Court of Massachusetts, all relating to machine vision and in particular methods for finding objects in a digital image. After MVTec threw all of the patents into reexamination, Cognex filed an ITC action on three of the nine patents. Cognex was forced to withdraw its claims on one of those patents during discovery and the remaining two went to trial before Judge Charneski at the ITC. Based on eight days of trial testimony (and extensive post-trial briefing), Judge Charneski found that no claims were infringed and that all of the asserted claims were invalid. In December 2013, the Federal Circuit affirmed the ITC’s finding of no infringement of the one surviving patent (the other having been invalidated by Foley in the PTO while the appeal was pending), and not reaching the invalidity findings, which had become moot due the non-infringement. 337-TA-680
- Bancorp Services, L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada. Represented Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada in a patent litigation matter. The Federal Circuit recently affirmed grant of summary judgment in favor of our client, Sun Life, that two patents owned by Bancorp are invalid for failure to claim patent eligible subject matter. Bancorp had appealed from the final decision of the U.S. District Court for the E.D. of Missouri which entered summary judgment that the asserted claims of U.S. Patents 5,926,792 and 7,249,037 were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The invalidated patents were the subject of three prior appeals to this court, where the defendants in each of those cases lost.
- DuPont v. BBA Nonwovens. Represented the defendant, BBA, in a patent suit in the Western District of Tennessee involving multi-layer spunblown fabrics. As a result of a favorable Markman ruling, the court granted summary judgment of non-infringement in favor of BBA. DuPont did not appeal.