Lawrence M. Hadley

Lawrence M. Hadley is the chair of his firm’s intellectual property department, which is a role that keeps him quite busy.

“The biggest challenge I have is making sure that our firm has a full-service IP practice that can take care of our existing clients and take care of new clients in all of their IP needs,” Hadley said.

Adding to the challenge, he said, is that Glaser Weil is a midmarket firm and generally represents midmarket clients, “but we handle matters that are every bit as large as the large firms for clients with problems that are every bit as complicated and worth every bit as much money.”

On any day, a client might call asking the department to handle a patent or trademark matter or a copyright issue for an entertainment client. He must make sure he has “the right people in place who are all experts in all of those areas who can jump on … pretty much anything that comes up and provide good results for our clients,” he said.

Hadley himself handles pretty much anything that comes up. He has worked on copyright matters and handled numerous cases at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Most of his cases lately have been patent matters. In August, he won a $5.7 million jury verdict in an infringement dispute over two patents that allow any computer to connect to Apple devices. He is still awaiting the court’s rulings on post-trial motions. Aqua Connect Inc. v. TeamViewer US Inc., 1:18-01572 (E.D. Tex., filed Oct. 11, 2018).

Last month, he won twin decisions from the Federal Circuit affirming PTAB rulings largely in favor of his client UUSI in long-running disputes with Apple and Samsung over the client’s patent on technology that is foundational to touch screens. Apple Inc. v. UUSI LLC, 21-1035 (Fed. Cir., dec’d. April 25, 2023).

Hadley also represents two female inventors battling tech giants. One is a Black woman with 50 patents in various areas who “kind of invented a lot of the technology around mobile payment,” he said. He defeated eight IPR petitions Samsung filed challenging her patents and had similar success defending some of the patents in a lawsuit Samsung filed in federal court. Samsung Electronics Co. LTD v. Blaze Mobile Inc., 5:21-cv-02989 (N.D. Cal., filed April 25, 2021).

Last month, however, his other client lost her jury trial to assert her patents on “find-my-device” technology. Hafeman v. LG Electronics Inc., 6:21-cv-00696 (E.D. Tex., filed July 2, 2021).

Hadley said he finds it ironic that the federal government and the PTO these days are pushing to expand diversity among inventors while the law tends to favor large companies. “There’s equal opportunity by defendants in trying to invalidate [inventors’] patents and avoid paying for the use of their patents,” he said.

— Don DeBenedictis