James R. Batchelder

Ropes & Gray LLP

East Palo Alto, San Francisco

Patent litigation

Batchelder, a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP, has extensive experience representing some of the world's top technology companies in patent litigation cases. He is a member of the firm's governing policy committee, having previously served as managing partner at the East Palo Alto and San Francisco offices.

He is Ropes' lead counsel representing Emerson Electric Co., a multinational technology manufacturer and engineering services provider, in a legal showdown over patent validity with wireless mesh network provider Sipco LLC.

The lead case is currently stayed. Sipco LLC v. Emerson Electric Co., 15-CV00319 (N.D. Ga., filed Jan. 30, 2015).

"Sipco has a large 60-patent portfolio, and Emerson has long questioned its patents. We decided to stand up to this bully," Batchelder said.

Along with the district court suit involving 10 patents, the sprawling case includes a multi-patent U.S. International Trade Commission investigation, more than 18 inter partes review and covered business method proceedings, multiple ex parte reexaminations and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeals relating to mesh network technology.

At the ITC, Batchelder said, Sipco has been forced to drop two out of four of the originally asserted patents. In one of them, the administrative law judge's Markman order found all of the claims invalid for indefiniteness, an issue Batchelder argued at the hearing.

At the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, Batchelder and his team succeeded in invalidating more than 100 claims over ten Sipco patents. Every claim challenged in the petitions that Ropes & Gray filed in the PTAB for Emerson has been found unpatentable; at the Federal Circuit the team secured four wins on appeal from PTAB final written decisions, Batchelder said.

He and the team are also assisting German counsel with Emerson's EPO opposition and infringement actions pending in Germany.

In January, ITC Administrative Law Judge Dee Lord rejected Sipco's complaint and found no violation by Emerson. In the Matter of: Certain Wireless Mesh Networking Products and Related Components Thereof, 337-TA-1131 (USITC, filed Aug. 3, 2018).

In pro bono work, Batchelder led a team that wrote an amicus brief to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals urging the judges to reverse a district court holding that threatened the privacy protections of emails, text messages and social media messages as soon as they are opened -- meaning, he said, that the only such messages that would retain protection would be spam or unopened junk mail. Hately v. Watts, 18-1306 (4th Cir., filed May 6, 2018).

Batchelder spends a lot of time before various courts in Washington, D.C. "I enjoy that city," he said. "We have a great office there and I love the energy of the young people in Washington trying to make a difference in policy and politics."

-- John Roemer