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John Cordani

Co-Chair, IP + Technology Group

Robinson+Cole

John Cordani is a Co-chair of Robinson+Cole‘s Intellectual Property + Technology Group and member of the Business Litigation Group, who focuses his practice on Intellectual Property litigation. He has litigated patent, trade secret, trademark, and antitrust cases through trial and appeal in federal courts across the United States, obtaining successful results in cases involving a diverse array of technology from specialty chemical products to automated pitching machines.

John maintains a world-wide patent litigation, prosecution, licensing and counseling practice. He is a registered patent attorney with extensive experience before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in document-intensive and scientific disputes.

John handles all phases of the patent litigation process, including claim construction, summary judgment, trials, and appeals in infringement matters. He has also tried complex commercial litigations, products liability cases, and land use matters through verdict and appeal.

John is a contributor to the firm’s Manufacturing Law Blog.

Prior to attending Cornell Law School, where he was the salutatorian of his class, John worked as a chemist, and is a named inventor on multiple patents covering aspects of his research. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law, where he teaches a course on Patent Litigation and Strategy, and serves as the co-chair of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section. He has also served as a Special Public Defender in a pro bono capacity providing representation for indigent defendants in criminal matters.

Recent Articles by John Cordani

Precooked Bacon, Artificial Intelligence Patents, and a Defense of the Common Law

Bacon is delightful. And the similarly savory subject of who must be named inventor on a bacon patent was the issue in the recent case of HIP, Inc. v. Hormel Foods Corp., No. 2022-1696 (Fed. Cir. May 2, 2023). HIP claimed that one of its employees materially contributed to the invention of Hormel’s patent on methods for precooking bacon. The question of what makes one an “inventor” was central to whether HIP’s employee should be added to the patent. More broadly, questions about inventorship and authorship have become central to recent commentary and speculation about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on intellectual property law. While AI did not factor into HIP v. Hormel, the decision provides a useful reminder about the role of the common law in developing answers to these momentous questions.

Christmas Light Patent Wars: Customer Infringement Notices and Free Speech

As James Madison once said, “Our First Amendment freedoms give us the right to think what we like and say what we please. And if we the People are to govern ourselves, we must have these rights, even if they are misused by a minority.” Not often do such lofty constitutional principles intersect with patent litigation. But the Federal Circuit’s decision in Lite-Netics, LLC v. Nu Tsai Capital, LLC, No. 2023-1146 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 17, 2023), upholds strong free speech rights for patent holders. The case deals with an issue of frequent concern for both outside and in-house patent counsel: how much can (or should) be said in the marketplace about a patent dispute?