Nathan Cummings is a partner in the Intellectual Property Litigation and Patent Counseling & Prosecution practice groups and a member of the Litigation department. He joined the Firm in 2000 and is resident in the Reston office.
Mr. Cummings' practice focuses on intellectual property litigation, with a particular emphasis on patent litigation. He has represented plaintiffs and defendants in patent infringement cases involving a wide range of technologies, including cellular communications and data transmission, automated telephone systems and call centers, speech compression and recognition software, Internet and Web applications, digital rights management, semiconductor devices, and consumer products. He has litigated in courts throughout the country, including the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Virginia, the District of Delaware, the Southern District of New York, the Northern, Central and Southern Districts of California, and the Eastern District of Texas.
In addition to his trial court experience, Mr. Cummings has substantial experience in the appellate courts, including the Federal Circuit and United States Supreme Court. He was also a primary author of an amicus brief in the Supreme Court on behalf of nine emerging technology companies in MGM Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., a landmark case involving secondary liability for copyright infringement in the context of peer-to-peer file-sharing software. The brief was cited in the Court's unanimous opinion at 545 U.S. 913, 929 (2005).
Mr. Cummings also counsels high-technology clients in all aspects of patent matters, including patent procurement, licensing, infringement, validity, enforceability and patent portfolio analysis. His technical background generally includes electrical, computer, communications and software technologies, and more particularly covers computer and microprocessor architectures, telecommunications, local and wide area networking, cellular telephony and data communications, Internet technologies, VLSI design, computer modeling and simulation, and software development and engineering.
Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Cummings was an associate in the Intellectual Property Group of Howrey & Simon's Washington, DC office. He is also a former law clerk for the Honorable Clyde H. Hamilton, Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. During law school, Mr. Cummings also clerked for the Honorable Mark D. Martin, then a Judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and now a Justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Mr. Cummings earned a JD and a post-graduate LLM in International and Comparative Law from Duke University in 1997, magna cum laude. During law school, he was a senior law review editor of Law & Contemporary Problems, and studied international law in Brussels, Belgium. He earned a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering on an honors curriculum from Brigham Young University in 1990, magna cum laude.
Prior to entering law school, Mr. Cummings was an engineer at IBM's Rochester, Minnesota, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina facilities. He also lived for nearly two years in France, and is proficient in French.
Mr. Cummings is licensed to practice in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the United States District Court for Eastern District of Virginia, the United States District Court for Eastern District of Texas, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
