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

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.  He is also a registered patent attorney.

On the transactional and counseling side, Mr. Hattenbach provides strategic guidance regarding all phases of patent portfolio management.  He has considerable experience advising companies actively involved in patent license negotiations, as well as companies evaluating the possibility of embarking upon licensing campaigns.  He has supervised the prosecution of patents and trademarks, including patents involved in reexamination and interferences.  He also conducts intellectual property reviews in connection with mergers, acquisitions, and asset purchases, and advises on technology development and commercialization matters.

Mr. Hattenbach received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Engineering, both with distinction, from Harvey Mudd College in 1992 and 1993, respectively.  During college he was elected president of the local chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  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.  During law school he received American Jurisprudence Awards in five subjects including Patent Law.

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

Representative Matters

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

• Tessera v. Motorola et al., a series of three § 337 investigations before the International Trade Commission against more than two dozen respondents accused of infringing patents on semiconductor encapsulation techniques and compliant semiconductor packaging architectures.  Two of these cases were tried in 2008.
  
• 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 
  
• Tessera v. Micron, Infineon and Qimonda, a patent and antitrust litigation focusing on semiconductor packaging technology for reducing stress in electrical connections caused by differential thermal expansion, as well as price fixing and attempted monopolization in DRAM markets 
  
• 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 et al., a series of patent infringement actions involving microprocessor cache memory management technology and a variety of other inventions related to computer architecture   
  
•  Tessera v. Amkor Technology, an arbitration tried 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
  
• 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 
  
•  Macrovision v. Dwight Cavendish Labs, a patent case concerning signal processing techniques for videotape copy protection
  
• Unova v. Compaq Computer, a patent infringement action 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:

•  “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) (co-author with Morgan Chu)
• “GATT TRIPs and the Small American Inventor,” 10:1 Intell. Prop. J. 61 (1995)

Seminars & Speeches

• Mr. Hattenbach's recent speaking engagements on patent law and litigation topics include conferences put on by the United States Patent & Trademark Office, the AIPLA, West Legalworks, ReedLogic, 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.