Christopher First Promoted to Partner at Heim, Payne & Chorush
Heim, Payne & Chorush congratulates Christopher First on his promotion to partner. Since joining the firm in 2015, Chris’s cutting-edge tech, scientific and legal expertise have made him a key member of the HPC team in complex litigation involving patent infringement and patent-related antitrust litigation, as well as inter partes review (IPR) at the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board and appellate work at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
In addition to his law degree, he holds a computer engineering degree. Before joining Heim, Payne & Chorush, Chris completed a clerkship with U.S. District Judge Roy S. Payne in the Eastern District of Texas – at the time, the busiest patent litigation venue in the nation.
Recent representative cases highlight Chris’s ability to provide strategic and effective counsel to both plaintiffs and defendants in complex and highly technical patent infringement litigation. His work for Weatherford International – one of the world’s largest multinational oilfield services companies – includes successfully challenging and invalidating every patent asserted by an offshoot of Packers Plus in Rapid Completions v. Weatherford, (Case No. 6:15-cv-724, E.D. Tex.) and later defending those rulings before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Chris also recently obtained a favorable settlement in Weatherford v. Tesco Corporation (Case No. 2:17-cv-456, E.D. Tex.) based on Tesco’s infringement of Weatherford’s patented control line manipulation systems. Tesco chose to settle during trial, just before the case was set to be submitted to the jury – and just after HPC’s devastating cross examination of Tesco’s key witnesses at trial.
Chris also recently obtained a favorable settlement for Wi-LAN in patent infringement litigation against LG in Wi-LAN, Inc. v. LG Electronics (Case No. 3:18-cv-01577, S.D. Cal.), based on LG’s continued infringement of several patents covering LG’s use of 4G LTE technology. Chris and the HPC team earned one of the first decisions in the nation in which a district court completely wiped out a defendant’s invalidity case based on Inter Partes Review estoppel. (Read the order here.) The case settled shortly after.
Heim, Payne & Chorush LLP represents plaintiffs and defendants in litigation across a broad range of technologies and business sectors. With a wide variety of technical and scientific backgrounds, firm attorneys handle all facets of intellectual property litigation for some of the largest energy and technology firms, as well as individuals and smaller companies. To learn more about the firm, visit www.hpcllp.com.