Litigator of the Week: Donald Dunner of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner

AMLaw Litigation Daily has named Finnegan partner, Donald R. Dunner, “Litigator of the Week” for his work representing Uniloc USA, in its appellate attempt to reinstate its $388 million Rhode Island federal court jury verdict against Microsoft. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reinstated the jury's finding that Microsoft infringed Uniloc's patent and gave Uniloc another chance at obtaining damages from Microsoft. While the article states that Uniloc will have to come up with a new theory in the damages retrial ordered by the Federal Circuit, because the appellate panel's ruling also tossed the time-honored "25 percent rule", Dunner assured ALM on Thursday that the court's rejection isn't going to be a problem for Uniloc. "We feel pretty good at this point, and I really don't think from a practical standpoint this damage ruling will impede us from putting on a very effective damages case," he said. The article notes that elimination of the 25 percent rule has Microsoft's deputy general counsel for litigation saying that it could “signal the end of unreasonable and outsized damages awards based on faulty methodology”; however, Dunner disagrees. The 25 percent rule, he said, was just one of many techniques damages experts have been using. "I don't think [its elimination] is going to have any enormous impact on future cases," Dunner said.