Benjamin W. Hattenbach

Ben Hattenbach is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella LLP and serves as a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. His practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and pre-litigation counseling, with a particular emphasis on the trial of patent infringement matters.

In each of the past five years, the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals named Mr. Hattenbach one of the top 75 intellectual property litigators in California. In 2010, The Legal 500 described him as "one of the country's best patent attorneys under 40." He has also been recognized as a leading lawyer by Chambers USA, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, The Best Lawyers In America, and The Legal News.

Mr. Hattenbach has litigated patent disputes before numerous federal and state courts, as well as the International Trade Commission, United States Patent & Trademark Office, and arbitration panels. On the transactional and counseling side, he provides strategic guidance regarding patent portfolio management, licensing, prosecution and acquisitions. He is a registered patent attorney.

Mr. Hattenbach received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Engineering, both with distinction, from Harvey Mudd College in 1992 and 1993, respectively. He received his J.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1996, where he was admitted to the Order of the Coif and served as executive editor of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal.

In his spare time Mr. Hattenbach is an internationally published landscape photographer who enjoys exploring remote wilderness areas.

Representative Matters

Representative litigation matters in which Mr. Hattenbach has served as counsel include:

• Intellectual Ventures v. Hynix, Elpida et al., an investigation before the International Trade Commission in which five patents were asserted against a broad array of DRAM and flash memory circuitry.
• Realtime Data v. Interactive Data et al., a case involving patents on data compression and decompression algorithms allegedly used to provide financial market information in near real time with reduced bandwidth requirements.
• Integrated Discrete Devices v. Diodes, a patent infringement matter involving techniques for fabricating semiconductor diodes having low forward conduction voltage drop and low reverse current leakage.
• Invensas v. Renesas, a multi-patent infringement action focused on semiconductor package substrate architectures having segmented voltage supply planes and reduced signal degradation.
• Tessera v. Motorola et al., multiple § 337 investigations, tried in 2008 and 2009 before the International Trade Commission, against more than two dozen respondents accused of infringing patents on semiconductor encapsulation techniques and compliant semiconductor packaging architectures.
• Santarus v. Par, a pharmaceutical patent litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act, tried in 2009, involving an immediate-release proton pump inhibitor.
• Tessera v. Amkor Technology, a series of arbitrations tried between 2008 and 2011 before a three judge panel from the International Chamber of Commerce, involving royalties due under an agreement licensing both patented and unpatented semiconductor packaging technology.
• Zone Labs v. Sygate, a patent infringement matter concerning software for centralized management of distributed firewalls for intelligently restricting Internet access.
• ECI Telecom v. Amati Communications, a state court suit involving contractual ownership claims to patents on optimization algorithms used in DSL communication and related trade secret misappropriation causes of action.
• MGI Software v. Zoomify, a patent and trademark infringement dispute relating to software for optimizing delivery of high resolution digital imagery over the Internet.
• Novellus Systems v. Applied Materials, a series of patent infringement cases involving an array of semiconductor processing techniques and equipment.
• Raychem v. ECI Telecom, a § 337 investigation before the International Trade Commission concerning patents on high speed modem technology.
• Intergraph v. Hewlett Packard, a series of patent infringement actions involving microprocessor cache memory management technology and a variety of other inventions related to computer architecture.
• Applied Materials v. AG Associates, a patent infringement case concerning rapid thermal processing technology for semiconductor fabrication.
• Medical Products Development v. McGhan Medical, a patent litigation matter involving techniques for manufacturing medical implants.
• Tessera v. Micron and Infineon, a patent case involving foundational semiconductor packaging technologies now broadly licensed by manufacturers of small-format ball grid array products, including the majority of the DRAM industry.
• Macrovision v. Dwight Cavendish Labs, a patent case concerning signal processing techniques for videotape copy protection.
• Compaq Computer v. Unova, patent infringement actions relating to smart batteries, removable disk drives and computer architecture.
• Affymetrix v. Incyte Genomics, a patent litigation matter involving DNA array technology, genetic analysis and an appeal of a patent interference decision.
• Stamps.com v. Pitney Bowes, a series of four related patent litigation cases involving encryption of postage indicia and networked systems for transmission of postage over the Internet.

Publications

Mr. Hattenbach frequently speaks and writes about patent law and practice.  His publications include:

• “Evaluating Patents,” ExecSense eBook (2012)
• "Patent Prosecution Pitfalls: Perspectives From The Trenches Of Litigation," J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc’y. (2010)
• "Bilski v. Kappos: A Divided Court Narrowly Reaffirms Patentability of Business Methods," Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal (2010)
• "The Changing Face of Patent Law: Globalization Meets Legislative and Judicial Activism," in Understanding Patent Reform Implications (2009)
• "Chickens, Eggs And Other Impediments To Escalating Reliance On Dictionaries In Patent Claim Construction," 85 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc’y. 181 (2003)
• "On Illuminating Black Holes In Patent Disclosures:  Toward A Structured Approach To Identifying Omitted Elements Under The Written Description Requirement Of Patent Law," 38 Hous. L. Rev. 1195 (2001)
• "Godzilla’s Footprint: What We Have Learned About Markman Hearings," Computer Law Association (1998)
• "GATT TRIPs and the Small American Inventor," 10:1 Intell. Prop. J. 61 (1995)

Seminars & Speaking Engagements

• Mr. Hattenbach's recent speaking engagements on patent law and litigation topics include conferences put on by the United States Patent & Trademark Office, China's State Intellectual Property Office, the AIPLA, West Legalworks, Stanford Law School, John Marshall Law School, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, ReedLogic, IP Counsel Forum and the IEEE.
• In recent years Mr. Hattenbach has also served on the planning committees for the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology’s Advanced Patent Law Institute and for the University of Southern California Law School’s Intellectual Property Institute. In addition, he has served as a member of the executive committee of the intellectual property section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

Bar & Court Admissions

• 1996, California
• U.S. District Court, Central and Northern Districts of California
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit
• U.S. Supreme Court
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office