Keith A. Orso

Keith Orso is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella LLP, where he practices patent law in the litigation and intellectual property groups. Mr. Orso has experience with a wide variety of technologies, ranging from computer architecture and communications to medical devices and pharmaceuticals. 

Since 2005, Mr. Orso has repeatedly been selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers Magazine's Southern California "Rising Stars" in intellectual property litigation. 

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Orso served as a law clerk to the Honorable Mariana R. Pfaelzer of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Mr. Orso earned his J.D. in 2001 from UCLA School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif. During law school, Mr. Orso worked as an Articles Editor on the UCLA Law Review and was awarded the American Jurisprudence Bancroft-Whitney Award in Legal Research and Writing.

Before entering law school, Mr. Orso obtained a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. His research and writing focused on the material properties of polymer thin films, and his graduate coursework included subjects such as solid state physics, surface phenomena, applied kinetics & chemical reaction analysis, mass transfer, and separations processes. At the University of Texas, Mr. Orso was the John E. Kasch endowed graduate fellow and was inducted into the honor societies of Phi Kappa Phi and Omega Chi Epsilon.  He is a member of the American Chemical Society. 

Mr. Orso received his Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, with distinction, from Harvey Mudd College, where he studied electrical, computer, chemical, and mechanical engineering and was awarded the Davies Engineering Prize. While attending Harvey Mudd, Mr. Orso also completed the requirements for a major in Economics at Claremont McKenna College. During summers, Mr. Orso worked with thin film inductive and magnetoresistive disk drive technologies as a design and product engineer at Applied Magnetics Corporation.

Representative Matters

St. Jude Medical v. Access Closure, Inc., a patent infringement case in the Western District of Arkansas relating to vascular closure devices.  The jury returned a verdict of willful infringement and awarded St. Jude $27.1 million in damages.

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies v. Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a case in the Southern District of California alleging, among other things, that the Salk Institute was the exclusive owner of a Ferring patent and that Ferring infringed a Salk patent.  Ferring moved to dismiss the claims for failing to state a claim, as being time-barred, and as otherwise defective, and within a month the case was dismissed with prejudice.

Quantum World Corp. v. Atmel Corp. et al., a patent infringement suit in the Eastern District of Texas involving patents directed to random number generators.

Tessera v. Amkor Technology, an arbitration, before a three-judge panel in the International Chamber of Commerce, relating to royalties due under an agreement licensing patented and unpatented semiconductor packaging technology.

Microprocessor Enhancement Corp. v. Texas Instruments Incorporated, a patent infringement case in the Central District of California relating to microprocessor architecture and conditional instruction execution. Irell & Manella obtained summary judgment of noninfringement on behalf of Texas Instruments and the judgment was affirmed on appeal.  After the case concluded, the patentee again sued Texas Instruments, alleging infringement of different products based on the incorporation of various ARM processors.  And again, Irell & Manella obtained summary judgment of noninfringement on behalf of Texas Instruments.

Affymax, Inc. v. Johnson & Johnson, a dispute in the Northern District of Illinois and before the American Arbitration Association involving the proper inventorship of various patents and patent applications covering erythropoietin (“EPO”) mimetic peptides.

DataTreasury Corp. v. NCR Corp., a patent infringement case in the Eastern District of Texas involving check image processing technology.

Quidel Corp. v. Inverness Medical Innovations, Inc., a patent infringement case in the Southern District of California involving thin film lateral flow immunoreactive diagnostic test devices.

Intergraph Hardware Technologies Co., Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Co., a series of patent infringement cases in the Eastern District of Texas involving cache memory technology and microprocessor architecture.

Townshend Intellectual Property L.L.C. v. Cisco Systems, Inc., a patent infringement case in the Northern District of California involving 56k modem technology.

Stamps.com v. Pitney Bowes, Inc., a series of patent infringement cases in Delaware involving electronic postage, encryption, and networked systems for secure transmission of postage over the internet.

Linear Technology Corp. v. Novellus Systems, Inc., a contract dispute in Santa Clara County Superior Court relating to the sale of allegedly infringing semiconductor wafer manufacturing equipment. 

Novartis Consumer Health, Inc. v. Elan Transdermal Technologies, Inc., a patent infringement case in the Southern District of Florida involving transdermal nicotine patches.

Publications

• "On Excluding Preferred Embodiments," Journal of the Patent & Trademark Office Society (December 2008)
• "Intellectual Property Litigation, Guide To Intellectual Property," Supplement to BioPharm International (August 2005) (co-author)
• "Prosecution Laches & Inequitable Conduct: An Outline of Recent Developments," Patent Litigation (Practising Law Institute) (2003 & 2004) (co-author)

Bar & Court Admissions

• 2001, California
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
• U.S. District Court, Central, Northern and Southern Districts of California
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office