Bob Whitman is a partner in King & Spalding’s New York office and a member of its Intellectual Property Practice. Mr. Whitman's practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and counseling, primarily in the areas of electrical and computer arts.
Mr. Whitman has had substantial experience representing clients (as plaintiffs and defendants) in major U.S. and international patent litigations. His litigation experience encompasses a wide range of technical fields, including semiconductor design and fabrication, computer hardware and software, medical devices, electronic components, digital cameras, data and voice communications, business methods and video processing.
Mr. Whitman was counsel for Toyota Motor Corp. in a much publicized patent litigation initiated by the alleged inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Toyota secured a dismissal of the litigation even though the plaintiff had previously obtained, on the same patents, multi-million dollar verdicts against Ford and Chrysler. Other representative litigation experience includes representation of Conner Peripherals in a multi-jurisdictional litigation against IBM involving over 20 patents directed to computer hard drives, which one Court referred to as "the largest patent litigation in history."
Mr. Whitman also has substantial licensing experience. He has negotiated and closed hotly contested licensing matters involving hundreds of asserted patents and hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees, often in conjunction with investigation of large patent portfolios to identify valuable assets.
Mr. Whitman also counsels clients with respect to the rendering of opinions regarding the validity, scope and enforceability of patents, and the strategic acquisition, management and exploitation of intellectual property rights.
Prior to joining King & Spalding in 2007, Mr. Whitman was a partner at Goodwin Proctor LLP and Kenyon & Kenyon. He was also Senior Intellectual Property Counsel for Siemens Corporation, where he provided counseling and litigation services to a number of operating companies, managed worldwide patent dockets and provided strategic prosecution counseling.
Mr. Whitman is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Bar Association's Litigation and Intellectual Property Sections and the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Mr. Whitman is admitted to the bar in New York and New Jersey, as well as the U.S. District Courts for Northern, Eastern and Southern Districts of New York and Northern District of California. He is also a registered patent attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
