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John Dellaportas
Co-Chair, Litigation Department
Emmet Marvin
John Dellaportas is the Co-Chair of Emmet Marvin’s Litigation Department. With more than two decades experience representing clients in high-stakes commercial, intellectual property and securities litigations and arbitrations, Mr. Dellaportas thrives under the challenge of achieving the right results for his clients and has successfully done so throughout his career.
Mr. Dellaportas handles cases involving banking and finance, patent and trade secrets, commercial real estate and other complex commercial litigation matters. Mr. Dellaportas also aggressively defends clients in shareholder class actions, and in civil enforcement actions and investigations brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He is lead counsel to government contractors on major procurement disputes and bid protests, and serves as an arbitrator and court-appointed fiduciary in financial services and real estate proceedings.
Notably, in 2012, Mr. Dellaportas served as lead trial counsel to Bruce Bent, co-inventor of the money market fund, and his son Bruce Bent II, in an SEC civil action. Following a month-long trial, a Manhattan federal jury rendered a unanimous verdict in favor of the Bents, clearing them of all SEC Rule 10b-5 and other securities fraud charges. That courtroom victory earned Mr. Dellaportas “Litigator of the Week” honors from The Am Law Litigation Daily in November 2012, and “Litigator in the Spotlight” recognition by The American Lawyer in January 2013. Mr. Dellaportas’ closing statement was featured in the November 7, 2012 issue of The Wall Street Journal.
A frequent writer and lecturer on securities law topics, Mr. Dellaportas most recently authored chapters on the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 for the Thomson Reuters treatise Securities Crimes, 2nd Edition. In 2009, he was a featured presenter at AsiaLaw’s 4th Annual Dispute Resolution Summit in Singapore, where he spoke on “Dispute Resolution in a Financial Crisis.”
Recent Articles by John Dellaportas
It’s Time for the Supreme Court to Weigh in on Lower Courts’ Improper Use of Rules 56 and 36
On October 21, 2024, Island Intellectual Property LLC (Island) filed a Petition for Certiorari to the Supreme Court in Island Intellectual Property LLC v. TD Ameritrade, Inc. This case exemplifies two dangerous trends in patent cases. First, district courts in patent cases are granting summary judgment while ignoring factual disputes and/or weighing evidentiary disputes against non-movants, thus depriving parties of their right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment. Rather than police this inappropriate summary judgment procedure, the Federal Circuit, on appeal, has either ignored or encouraged a special patent case procedure in manner that in effect makes it so that Rule 56 seems not to apply like it would in other civil litigation. Second, as proved to be the case in Island, the Federal Circuit is making matters worse by summarily affirming in single-word affirmances without any further guidance.
Island Petition Highlights Patent Decisions Increasingly Deviate from Civil Procedure Norms
The Magistrate Judge in his report and recommendation invalidated Claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 7,509,286 (“’286 Patent”), with a cursory analysis on summary judgment, failing to provide an Alice Step 2 analysis or any analysis at all of the over 1,400 pages of evidence supporting the unconventional, non-routine, and inventive aspects of claim. The District Court then adopted the Magistrate Judge’s report, after erroneously characterizing the briefing by Island, with a statement merely commenting that all Island’s evidence was “unavailing,” and no more. On appeal, the Federal Circuit failed to cure any of these deficiencies, instead issuing an order under Federal Circuit Rule 36 simply stating “affirmed” and nothing more. This case is thus a poster child of how patent cases are increasingly deviating from the norms of civil procedure.