Duane Morris LLP

Partner

Christopher J. Tyson is a former U.S. Navy nuclear engineer, registered patent attorney, and partner with over eighteen years of experience handling complex IP litigation, transactional matters, and prosecution matters for clients ranging from some of the world’s largest technology companies to startup companies and individual inventors.

Chris’s current practice is primarily in patent litigation matters before federal courts throughout the country, including in Texas, Delaware and California, and in post-grant proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). In patent litigation matters, Chris leads the technical team responsible for distilling down the merits and strategies of the infringement and validity aspects of the case, as well as for interfacing with client engineers and technical experts, and overseeing substantive discovery. Chris also regularly argues at claim construction (Markman) and dispositive motion hearings at the district court level, and has argued several appeals at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In PTAB post-grant proceedings, Chris serves as lead counsel, from drafting the initial petitions through arguing in final Trial hearings, and is a valued contributor to the firm’s PTAB practice group that is consistently ranked as the best in the country at representing petitioners in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. See Unified Patents’ institutional success index (2018-2025).

In addition to his litigation and PTAB practice, Chris prosecutes patent and trademark applications before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, counsels clients on the development, commercialization and licensing of their intellectual property, and drafts and negotiates patent, trademark, software and know how license agreements.

Chris is also widely recognized as a staunch advocate for U.S. military veterans, and has more than a decade of experience representing clients pro bono before the U.S. Court of Appeals of Veterans Claims, Board of Veterans Appeals, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and branch-specific Discharge Review Boards and Boards of Correction for Military Records. Chris also serves as a firm-wide mentor to attorneys representing U.S. military veteran clients in cases before these courts and agencies, and as a mentoring attorney to junior attorneys of The Veterans Consortium’s National Volunteer Corps.

Prior to his legal career, Chris served for over eight years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, where he managed the operation and maintenance of nuclear power plants in a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, including electrical power generation and distribution, and mechanical and propulsion plant systems, and was qualified as a nuclear engineering officer.

Chris is a 2010 graduate of George Mason University School of Law, Virginia (Juris Doctorate), a 2007 graduate of Old Dominion University, Virginia (Master of Engineering Management), and a 1999 graduate of the United States Naval Academy (Bachelor of Science, Ocean Engineering).