Meredith Addy

Meredith Addy, co-founder and managing partner of intellectual property law firm AddyHart P.C., is a deeply experienced litigator who specializes in cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in the federal district courts, and at the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Addy has spent her career counseling high-profile companies in the software, technology, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries. Her clients include Fortune 1000 companies, mid-tier entrepreneurial firms, and individual inventors. She has argued cases involving technologies ranging from innovative software and electronics—including avionics for the defense industry, to pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and Hatch-Waxman (ANDA) litigation.

Addy has appeared in more than 80 federal district court cases and in more than 100 appeals to the Federal Circuit; her experience includes multiple IPRs at the PTAB, and she has successfully litigated cases in the US Court of Federal Claims. Law360 has identified Addy as one of the Most Influential Women in IP Law. According to independent research reported in Law360, she is one of the five female private-sector litigators who have argued most frequently before the Federal Circuit in the last decade and one of only two of those five licensed to practice before the USPTO. Addy is the only woman ranked in Band 1 by Chambers USA for intellectual property litigation in Illinois. Along with her Chambers ranking, Addy is perennially ranked as a top lawyer in Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, IP Stars, and Life Sciences Stars, has been listed in the IAM 1000, and was named one of the 250 Top Women in IP by IPmetrics.

Practicing in today’s highly complex technical environment, Addy has an innate ability to explain complex legal and technical issues to jurists and laypeople alike—an ability that in part depends on her training as an electrical engineer. Chambers USA has noted “She focuses on developing and executing strategies to achieve the most efficient approach to realizing her clients’ IP goals. Her clients describe her as ‘an exceptionally skilled lawyer’ and a ‘key figure, who knows the courts inside and out,’ adding that she is ‘extremely pro-business. She really understands business and how it’s run.’”

Addy has held high management positions at AmLaw100 firms and IP boutiques, including having served as office managing partner of the Chicago office of an AmLaw100 firm; as chair of the national patent litigation practice at another AmLaw100 firm; and as chair of the national appellate practice at one of the nation’s largest IP law firms. She has also served on firms’ Executive Committees and Boards of Directors. Addy for ten years was a member of the Federal Circuit Advisory Council and was a co-founder and the first president of the Richard Linn American Inn of Court, directed to intellectual property. She served on the Board of Directors for the Federal Circuit Bar Association, and as chair and co-chair of the Amicus Committees for the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) and the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago (IPLAC).

Experienced in protecting and monetizing corporate intellectual asset portfolios, Addy in 2015 earned her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago’s Booth School. She has assisted district courts as a Special Master under F.R.C.P. § 706, and as a Court-Appointed Expert under F.R.C.P. § 53, supervising various aspects of complex patent cases about technologies ranging from encryption to guided vehicles to medical devices, and advising courts on all aspects of the discovery process; claim construction and patent validity; summary judgment proceedings; pre-trial proceedings, and trial.

From 2013 to 2022, Addy wrote the blog Business De Novo, which she created to generate conversations around the business of innovation and the contemporary state of patent law in the US. Addy’s articles have been published on IPWatchdog.com and has been a perennial editor of Claim Construction in the Federal Circuit, a publication of West LegalWorks. She is a frequent speaker at legal and industry events, has taught CLE-credit courses on patent litigation, and has written numerous articles and publications.