Overview
Dinis Cheian litigates complex commercial matters in courts across the nation. He has worked on cases in a variety of practice areas including intellectual property, class actions, administrative law, insurance, business disputes, oil & gas, power electronics, life sciences, artificial intelligence & machine learning, and financial technology.
Recently, Dinis helped secure an exclusion order and cease and desist orders from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on behalf of power systems manufacturer Vicor Corporation, banning the importation of power modules and unlicensed computing systems found to infringe Vicor’s patents. At trial, Dinis played a crucial role by cross-examining Respondents’ technical expert and putting on Vicor’s own expert. Before and after trial, Dinis drafted key motions and briefs and took many fact and expert depositions, including through interpreters and involving source code. Dinis and his team are currently continuing to represent Vicor Corporation in an appeal of parts of the ITC ruling in the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit.
Dinis represented plaintiff Gemedy against The Carlyle Group and Two Six Labs in a trade secret case involving cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning software for government and private all-domain cyber security applications. Dinis was in charge of many key aspects of the case, including drafting motions, working on expert reports, taking corporate and individual depositions, defending a three-day deposition of Gemedy’s founder, and running offensive and defensive discovery. The lawsuit was dismissed on a joint stipulation by the parties.
Dinis also helped secure an $18.8 million settlement on behalf of Pascal Metrics in its trade secret misappropriation suit against Health Catalyst in Delaware Superior Court. Pascal, a healthcare analytics company, developed algorithms or “triggers” to identify adverse health events in hospital patients, which defendants used to develop a competing product. Dinis played a key role in litigation, notably deposing defendant’s CFO and corporate representative, thus securing key admissions to support Pascal’s damages model. Dinis also successfully argued a motion to compel documents that resulted in Pascal obtaining favorable evidence. Minutes before Dinis was set to argue the motions in limine, the case settled favorably.
Dinis prosecuted claims of patent infringement on behalf of Repeat Precision in a litigation related to fracking tools. Dinis took the lead on drafting and arguing the majority of the motions in the case. At trial, Dinis cross-examined the opponent’s VP of Product Management, a key witness. While the jury found no infringement, it did find Repeat Precision’s patent valid. Dinis’s team is now challenging the non-infringement verdict.
BACKGROUND
Dinis joined Susman Godfrey after clerking for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Dinis previously spent five years in the Intellectual Property group of a top law firm as a Technical Advisor and Patent Agent.
Dinis holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Honors & Distinctions
Honors and Awards
- Magna Cum Laude, Harvard Law School
- Tau Beta Pi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Clerkships
- Honorable Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Education
Education
- Harvard Law School (J.D., magna cum laude)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (M.Eng.; B.S., Tau Beta Pi)
Admissions
Admissions
Bar Admissions
- New York
Court Admissions
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Publications
- “Absolute and Arbitrary”: How the Supreme Court's Certiorari Power Violates the Nondelegation Doctrine, 50 BYU L. Rev. (2025) (forthcoming)
- Solving General and Specific Intent: A Mapping on the MPC and Applications to the Categorical Approach, 32 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 1, 13 (2025)
- The Cost of Drug Patent Expiration Date Errors, 42 Nat. Biotech. 1024-25 (2024)
- I See Dead Patents: How Bugs in the Patent System Keep Expired Patents Alive, 33 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. (2022).
- Exploring Patent Practitioners’ Duty to Correct Excess Patent Term Adjustment, IP Watchdog (Oct. 20, 2022).
- Patent Litigators and Patent Lawyers Representing Generic Pharmaceutical Companies Should Be on the Lookout for Patent Office’s PTA Calculation Mistakes, Chicago IP Litigation (Oct. 21, 2022).
Languages
Languages
- French
- Romanian
- Russian