LES 2026 Annual Meeting

Sterne Kessler’s Nirav Desai and Lestin Kenton will speak at the LES 2026 Annual Meeting, a premier gathering of licensing and intellectual property professionals featuring keynote presentations, panel discussions, roundtables, and interactive workshops focused on the evolving IP landscape.

Nirav and Lestin will lead the roundtable session, “Licensing at the Intersection of Prosecution, PTAB, and District Court Litigation,” which will focus on how licensing teams and their counsel can manage these interdependencies intentionally to protect and enhance portfolio value.

Session Overview

For licensing professionals, patent prosecution, PTAB proceedings, and district court litigation have long been interconnected. What has changed is the degree to which licensing outcomes now turn on how deliberately those stages are coordinated. Decisions made during prosecution increasingly determine standing, damages and lost-profits theories, disclosure obligations, and enforcement viability across venues. This roundtable focuses on how licensing teams and their counsel can manage these interdependencies intentionally to protect and enhance portfolio value.

Drawing from recent PTAB decisions and district court rulings, the roundtable will examine how ownership structures, assignment practices, and prosecution control affect standing and enforceability in licensing and enforcement campaigns. The discussion will address how claim scope, prosecution history, and record development shape damages and lost-profits analyses, and how early prosecution choices can either strengthen or undermine valuation and negotiating leverage.

The roundtable will also address disclosure and record-creation issues that frequently surface in PTAB challenges and litigation. Speakers will discuss how statements made to examiners, as well as omissions from the prosecution record, can later constrain enforcement positions or be affirmatively used against a patent owner. Particular attention will be paid to examiner error, why it matters in licensing-driven portfolios, and how failures in examination can create downstream risk if not addressed through proactive prosecution management and record correction.

A portion of the discussion will focus on prosecution control and continuation strategy as core licensing tools rather than administrative formalities. The roundtable will explore how disciplined continuation practice can preserve optionality, adapt claim coverage to market and competitive developments, mitigate estoppel and PTAB exposure, and support evolving enforcement and monetization objectives.

Participants will leave with concrete, practice-tested guidance for integrating prosecution, PTAB strategy, and district court considerations into a cohesive licensing-forward IP strategy, reflecting how sophisticated portfolios are built, defended, and monetized in modern licensing programs.