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Erick Robinson
Partner
Cherry Johnson Siegmund James PC
Erick Robinson is a nationally recognized trial lawyer, patent litigator, and intellectual property strategist at Cherry Johnson Siegmund James PC, where he leads high-stakes patent and trade secret litigation on behalf of Fortune 100 companies, technology pioneers, and individual inventors alike.
With more than two decades of experience, Erick has tried and managed complex patent cases resulting in jury verdicts and settlements totaling billions of dollars in value. He regularly confronts the world’s most formidable adversaries—including Meta, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and Cisco—in bet-the-company disputes across U.S. district courts, the International Trade Commission, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Erick’s practice extends well beyond domestic borders. He has orchestrated multijurisdictional litigation campaigns protecting core technologies across the Unified Patent Court, China, Germany, India, and other key venues. His strategic approach integrates patent monetization, licensing, and PTAB defense, consistently securing institution denials and preserving valuable patent portfolios under challenge.
Before joining Cherry Johnson Siegmund James, Erick served as Director of Patents for Qualcomm and Senior Patent Counsel at Red Hat, experiences that sharpened his ability to align litigation strategy with broader business objectives. He was also head of patent litigation at a leading Chinese law firm, giving him rare insight into cross-border IP enforcement.
A published authority on patent litigation and litigation finance, Erick has been published and quoted in over 100 articles and publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Intellectual Asset Management. He has been recognized among the Leading 300 IP Strategists Worldwide since 2014. Erick is also a certified Texas mediator.
Recent Articles by Erick Robinson
Why the Unified Patents Model Would Not Work in China
Unified Patents is a relatively new form of patent troll that works as a “Troll of Trolls” or “ToT.” They file IPRs (inter-partes reexamination requests) to kill patents. While they purport to only attack “bad patents,” their definition of a “bad patent” is simply any patent asserted against their clients. So who are their clients? Good question – that is a large part of the problem. They keep most of their clients’ identities secret. Unified does identify a handful of their members on their website such as Adobe, Google, NetApp, Roku, and Salesforce… But China is different. Here, a mercenary third party attacking innovation via patents is problematic. China, unlike America, has made innovation a top priority. China’s government has also, over the last few years, created the best patent enforcement environment in the world.
Why NPEs are necessary for China to dominate its domestic chip industry
NPEs are uniquely positioned to help China by attacking foreign entities to clear the way for Chinese companies by exerting pressure in ways that only NPEs can. Even if Chinese semiconductor companies had the necessary patents and experience to engage their foreign competitors, they would risk retaliation from these foreign parties. NPEs, on the other hand, can unilaterally attack foreigners without fear of retaliatory patent suits. Although there are a few of antitrust issues, I do not believe that NPEs that act in the best interest of China should, or will, be attacked by the NDRC or any other antitrust agency in China.
