Dirk D. Thomas

Dirk Thomas is the Managing Principal of McKool Smith’s Washington, DC office.  Prior to joining McKool Smith, he was co-chair of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s Intellectual Property Litigation Group.  Mr. Thomas’ practice focuses on intellectual property litigation, with an emphasis on cases involving computer hardware and software, semiconductor products and manufacturing methods, telephony and wireless communications systems, medical devices and procedures, refinery products and methods, and manufacturing technologies.  Mr. Thomas also has experience with ANDA litigation.

Mr. Thomas has first-chaired numerous jury patent trials, and also first-chaired multiple full-evidentiary arbitration proceedings.  In addition to his impressive trial record, Mr. Thomas also represents clients in appellate matters before the Federal Circuit and has argued five matters before that Court, three of which resulted in commonly-cited precedential decisions.  Mr. Thomas most recently tried a matter for the firm’s client BTG at the International Trade Commission (ITC) against Samsung and other respondents on patents covering multi-level cell flash memory products.  Mr. Thomas also recently handled the liability portion of a litigation in the Eastern District of Texas against numerous chip manufacturers and end-user defendants on behalf of the firm’s client Wi-LAN Inc. on patents covering the Wi-Fi standard and the use of wide-band OFDM in that standard.  Mr. Thomas also recently handled another ITC investigation on behalf of the firm’s client ChriMar Systems concerning patents relating to power over Ethernet systems. Certain of the litigated matters Mr. Thomas has led included multi-jurisdictional patent enforcement proceedings in domestic and foreign courts (including the EPO), and Mr. Thomas coordinated the efforts of the U.S. and foreign litigation teams in those matters.