Holmes Hawkins is the head of King & Spalding’s Intellectual Property Practice Group. His practice covers all aspects of the firm’s intellectual property practice, with particular emphasis on the litigation and trial of patent infringement cases. He has substantial first-chair trial experience representing clients as both plaintiffs and defendants in patent infringement lawsuits throughout the country, including cases relating to computer systems and software, Internet-related technologies, telecommunications and electronics systems, financial service models, consumer products, and medical devices. Mr. Hawkins is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, where he has been actively involved in a number of adversarial patent reexamination proceedings, often as an alternative to district court litigation. He also regularly counsels clients on a wide variety of intellectual property issues, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and licensing matters.
The 2011 edition of Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers rates Mr. Hawkins in the top tier (Band 1) of intellectual property lawyers in the State of Georgia and reports that he is "highly respected by peers and clients" and "receives particular mention for his handling of patent infringement cases." Mr. Hawkins was also recently selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2012 edition of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Intellectual Property Litigation and Patent Litigation. Mr. Hawkins is also listed in IAM Patent Litigation - The World's Leading Patent Litigators 2011 and The International Who's Who of Patent Lawyers 2011.
Mr. Hawkins received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, with high honors, from Georgia Tech and his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Georgia. While in law school, he served as one of the founding members and the managing editor of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law, the nation’s first student-edited law journal devoted solely to the field of intellectual property law.
Mr. Hawkins regularly serves as a Visiting Professor at Georgia Tech, where he teaches public policy courses relating to intellectual property issues to undergraduate and graduate students. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a member of the Board of Directors of North Fulton Community Charities.
