ROBERT A. ROWAN, who specializes in patent and trademark litigation, joined the firm on June 29, 1988. He obtained his juris doctor degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 1973 after attending the United States Military Academy at West Point and the University of Missouri. With thirty years of trial experience, Mr. Rowan brings to Nixon & Vanderhye a broad background in intellectual property litigation as well as corporate and commercial litigation, including anti-trust, trade regulation and securities class actions. Mr. Rowan’s intellectual property litigation includes patent, trademark and copyright infringement actions where he has been lead counsel in numerous jury and non-jury trials, arbitrations, mediations and appeals in various federal and state courts and regulatory agencies, including over 20 different federal district courts, the United States Claims Court, the Federal Communications Commission, the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Hawaii, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Federal and Ninth Circuits, where he has won affirmance of a multi-million judgment against the United States, as well as various other appeals. Most recently, in February 2007, Mr. Rowan, along with fellow N&V litigator, Joseph Presta, obtained a $39 million jury verdict in federal district court (S.D.Miss.) for attempted monopolization under the Sherman Antitrust Act in a "Walker-Process" and "sham litigation" case predicated on fraudulently obtained patents relating to the casino gaming industry.

Mr. Rowan was formerly associated with and a partner of Cades, Schutte, Fleming & Wright, an eighty (80) lawyer corporate law firm in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was a member and chairman of the Administrative and Executive Committees and a managing partner of that firm's Washington, D.C. branch office. Mr. Rowan left Cades, Schutte to head up the litigation section of Washington, D.C.'s Fleischman & Walsh, which specializes in the cable television and cellular telephone industries. Since joining Nixon & Vanderhye in 1988, Mr. Rowan has focused on patent, trademark, copyright and unfair competition litigation, trademark prosecution and intellectual property counseling and licensing. He has handled both jury and non-jury cases involving patent, trademark and copyright infringement in Texas, New York, Florida, Hawaii, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, South Carolina, Nevada, Washington, D.C. and Washington state, where he obtained a multi-million dollar patent infringement settlement involving immunoglobulin purification and, more recently, summary judgments of non-infringements of both utility and design patents, which judgments were recently affirmed by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Rowan is currently lead counsel in various patent and trademark infringement litigations in such diverse fields as asphalt plant manufacturing, metal casting, plastic molding, glass products and casino gambling. Mr. Rowan is the author of Festo VII: The Supreme Court Reinstates the “Flexible Bar,” But Will It Stay Put?, an analysis of recent decisions regarding the doctrine of equivalents and prosecution history estoppel, which was published by the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section (Summer 2002).