Tom Pratt has sixteen years of experience litigating and counseling clients in complex intellectual property matters. Mr. Pratt has successfully represented clients in all phases of litigation, including Markman hearings, preliminary injunction hearings and other pre-trial hearings, discovery, and pre- and post-trial motions. Mr. Pratt has also successfully argued before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. On behalf of patent owners, Mr. Pratt has successfully achieved multi-million dollar settlements, and prevailed on motions for summary judgment, including summary judgment of patent infringement. On behalf of defendants, Mr. Pratt has successfully defended clients accused of multi-million dollar liability. These successes include cases in which Mr. Pratt handled summary judgment proceedings in which the district court granted summary judgment of non-infringement and/or invalidity.
In addition to his litigation activities, Mr. Pratt has also counseled clients regarding various computer software and hardware patents, including patents relating to modems, DRAM technology and computer graphics. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and Northwestern Law School where he teaches Patent Trial Practice. Mr. Pratt is a contributing author of the Patent Trial Advocacy Casebook, Second Edition, published in 2010 by the ABA and the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.
Since 2005, Mr. Pratt has been annually selected as an "Illinois Super Lawyer". The Super Lawyers list represents the top 5% of Illinois lawyers, as chosen through a peer balloting process involving 47,000 lawyers from across Illinois, and through a research and review panel organized by Law & Politics magazine. Law & Politics asked the attorneys to name the best lawyers they personally observed in action. Mr. Pratt was also named to the Leading Lawyers Network. Based upon peer nominations and approval by the network's Advisory Board, only the top lawyers are nominated and eligible for membership in the Leading Lawyers Network.
Exemplary clients represented by Mr. Pratt include:
- NIKE, Inc. (performance monitoring products)
- General Electric (steam turbine technology)
- CIBA Vision (colored contact lenses and chemical processes for making colored lenses)
- Rayovac (consumer electronics products)
- Digimarc Corp. (software digital watermarking of images and audio files)
- Scientific-Atlanta (software-based interactive program guides)
- MTS Systems Corp. (laser additive manufacturing processes)
Mr. Pratt earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kansas in 1989, where he was a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu Engineering Honor Societies. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Kansas in 1992. Mr. Pratt graduated Order of the Coif and was an Associate Editor of the Law Review.
Mr. Pratt is a registered patent attorney and is admitted to practice in the state of Illinois. He is also admitted to practice before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and numerous federal district courts.
Mr. Pratt practices in the Chicago office of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.
