Ashok Ramani

Ashok Ramani heads the IP litigation practice at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. He moved to the firm in 2018 after spending more than a dozen years at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP. He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School.

“I’ve now been at Davis Polk for five years, and we have grown considerably,” Ramani said. “We consider ourselves a startup within the firm. Our revenue is up two-and-a-half times over the last couple years.”

Ramani spoke in late April, a day after returning from Florida, where he and his team had won by attaining a judgment as a matter of law ruling from a federal judge just minutes before closing arguments were to begin.

“As best we can determine, this is only the second time a JMOL has been granted before jury deliberations in a patent case,” Ramani said.

The client was Comcast Cable Communications LLC, the defendant in a $177 million patent infringement challenge by an internet television platform provider. WhereverTV Inc. v. Comcast Cable Communications LLC et al., 2:18-cv-00529 (M.D. Fla., filed Aug. 1, 2018).

WhereverTV’s claim related to Comcast’s integration into its program lineup of Netflix and other streaming apps. Ramani’s defense pointed out that the plaintiff’s patent covered an interactive program guide feature that Comcast never used.

“The judge let us get our facts out, then started peppering the other side with questions. Then, after a short break, he ruled for us. Our argument had gotten through, and it was really nice to see.”

Ramani pointed out that he and his team are two-for-two over the last few months. In a plaintiff-side case, he successfully represented a medical technology company suing a rival maker of an advanced blood sample filter device. The jury’s $2.1 million award could be increased several times over by a 17.7 percent royalty finding. Magnolia Medical Technologies Inc. v. Kurin Inc., 1:19-cv-00097 (D. Del., filed Jan. 16, 2019).

In a bifurcated trial, the Davis Polk team obtained a verdict of infringement in the first phase and a damages and no invalidity verdict in the second phase. Ramani’s motion for a permanent injunction is pending before the court.

“We had a quick jury on that one — back in an hour,” Ramani said.

“When we hire people, I promise that we are going to give them trial experience if they show they can handle it,” he added. “I am most proud that we had multiple associates taking witnesses in each of these trials.”

—John Roemer