Ashley Keller

is a Managing Director at Burford Capital, a litigation finance company. He co-founded Gerchen Keller Capital and as Managing Director helped steer its growth to $1.3 billion in assets under management prior to its acquisition by Burford. Before co-founding Gerchen Keller, Mr. Keller was a partner at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP, The American Lawyer’s litigation boutique of the year, where he handled various trial and appellate matters involving multi-billion-dollar securities and patent cases, contractual disputes and mass-tort class actions.

Mr. Keller has also worked as an analyst at Alyeska Investment Group, a Chicago-based market neutral hedge fund, where he focused on investments in companies facing litigation and other complicated regulatory matters.

For more information or to reach out to Mr. Keller, please visit his firm webpage.

Recent Articles by

The PTAB’s dramatic effect on patent value and corresponding disincentives to capital allocation

Whether one celebrates or decries the PTAB, there can be little doubt that it has worked a profound effect on the value of American patents—and, concomitantly, on incentives to invest in research and development… Compared to their judicial counterparts, PTAB judges are biased in favor of invalidity. Personnel differences also explain a more disturbing phenomenon, mainly, that the Patent and Trademark Office seems to be at war with itself. Frequently, the PTAB invalidates claims based on prior art that examiners considered during initial prosecution. The only explanation for such discordant outcomes is that PTO examiners take a more pro-patent view of validity than the judges who make up the PTAB.

TC Heartland: An Alternate Opinion – Not As Bad As It Seems

We believe that the fallout from the Court’s ruling last week will be less dire for patent owners than most commentators predict. The conventional wisdom is that TC Heartland will cause a mass exodus of patent filings from the Eastern District of Texas and other supposedly plaintiff-friendly venues to Delaware, the Northern District of California and, to a lesser extent, the other states. The assumption underlying this view is that all those plaintiffs will be forced to file in the state where the defendant is incorporated. Yet even post-TC Heartland, patent owners have options and can continue to be strategic about how and where they proceed.