Fenwick’s David Hadden Named Top IP Lawyer for Fourth Consecutive Year

Fenwick litigation partner David Hadden has been honored by the Daily Journal among the top intellectual property lawyers in California for 2021, the fourth consecutive year he has been recognized by the publication.

Hadden, a top trial lawyer, is highly sought by the world’s most recognized and innovative companies to help win complex and high-stakes patent litigation disputes. Earlier this year, Patexia recognized Hadden as the best performing patent defense lawyer in the country.

The Daily Journal noted that Hadden’s ability to solve complex intellectual property cases can be attributed to his graduate work in theoretical physics, which preceded his legal career.

“If you can figure out problems in 26 dimensions, it makes most things seem doable,” he said. “That background taught me how to work hard.”

The publication pointed out that Hadden has developed a knack for achieving wins via summary judgment for numerous technology company clients to speed results and save litigation costs.

In 2020, Hadden secured several victories on behalf of Amazon.com, Amazon Web Services, and 80+ Amazon Web Services customers against PersonalWeb, which had asserted that those customers infringed several of its patents. He also successfully represented Amazon at trial in which a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that Amazon’s Alexa-powered smart home devices did not infringe patents held by Innovation Sciences, and further concluded these patents were invalid.

The Daily Journal noted that in these cases “defense requires a proactive offense” and that Hadden’s approach was to sue for declaratory judgment, contending Amazon had already defeated claims on those patents, and so they could not again be asserted against individual customers.

“The case was important because every company of any size in tech uses Amazon Web Services,” Hadden told the Daily Journal. “It was an efficient way to get the right result.”

Hadden’s 2021 Top IP Lawyer profile is available through the Daily Journal (subscription required).