Devan Padmanabhan

A founder of Padmanabhan & Dawson, PLLC, Devan Padmanabhan is a highly experienced litigator in all matters relating to technology law, including patent and trademark infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and breach of contracts related to technology.  He has spent his career devoted to technology related legal issues, providing clients with strategic solutions to leverage their intellectual property and other technology.  Mr. Padmanabhan has successfully litigated in district courts across the country.  He has also successfully handled appeals in the Federal Circuit and other appellate courts throughout the country.  He also routinely practices before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, obtaining favorable decisions in post-grant review proceedings, as well as obtaining patents for clients. 

Mr. Padmanabhan and his team have litigated across nearly all technology areas, including mechanical inventions, computer hardware inventions, computer software inventions, and compounds.  He has defended both plaintiffs and defendants.  In connection with his plaintiff-side work, he has successfully secured investor funding for plaintiff’s contingent-investor-funded cases. 

Mr. Padmanabhan also helps his clients protect and monetize their intellectual property through the negotiation and preparation of technology-based agreements, including licensing and settlement agreements, as well as nondisclosure agreements to name a few. In addition, he consults with many clients with respect to their overall IP strategy.

Mr. Padmanabhan attended Northwestern University, where he majored in electrical engineering and was an Eastman Kodak Scholarship recipient before graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1990. He remained in downtown Chicago for his legal education at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. While he was there, he served as the executive editor of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology for two years, and in 1993, he was awarded his Juris Doctor. After graduation, Mr. Padmanabhan spent several years with a national law firm based in Minneapolis before eventually founding his current firm in September 2018.