Chris Limbacher

Associate
609 Main Street, Suite 3200 | Houston, TX 77002
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About Chris Limbacher

Chris Limbacher took a unique path to become a tech-focused patent litigator. Before joining the Heim, Payne & Chorush litigation team, Chris spent most of the past decade working as a software engineer in the healthcare and oil & gas industries. After multiple years developing commercial products – including enterprise software suites, real-time control systems, and automated wireless tracking systems – he decided it was time to take on new challenges as a practicing attorney.

Now, Chris focuses on patent litigation for a variety of companies in cases involving the same computer technologies and electrical engineering issues that he mastered in his software engineering career. He regularly represents clients in IPR (inter partes review) proceedings and ex parte patent reexaminations.

In both technology and law, Chris’ approach to solving problems has stayed the same. He learned first-hand the value of immersion to provide the degree of expertise necessary to excel. His hands-on engineering experience in the oil & gas industry resulted in multiple invention disclosures and a pending patent for automating drill pipe tally during drilling.

Similarly, his in-depth study of the healthcare industry led him to write and publish an article on the effects of state and national legislation on healthcare pricing. Chris brings that same deep-dive approach to patent litigation. “It’s important to immerse yourself, both in how the technology works and how the industry works, in order to provide the best solution to a client’s issue,” he says.

As a student at the University of Houston Law Center, Chris served as Note and Comment Editor for the Houston Law Review, and he was honored for authoring the year’s best student article. His numerous academic awards include the Dean’s Scholarship, the Stephen S. Rudolph Scholarship for Outstanding Academic Achievement, and multiple LEX Awards for top law school section scores in Contracts, Civil Procedure, and Constitutional Law.

Representative Cases
  • Automation Middleware Solutions (AMS)
    PR2017-00023, -00048, -00049, -00469, -00470
    The challenged patents at issue in the AMS proceedings relate to motion control systems and interface software that facilitates the creation of hardware-independent motion control software. Chris represented Patent Owner Automation Middleware Solutions, Inc., and along with other Heim, Payne & Chorush attorneys, succeeded in convincing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to deny the institution of all five proceedings.
  • MasterObjects, Inc.
    IPR2020-01201
    The challenged patent relates to applications where incremental user input is used to retrieve matching content from one or more server systems to dynamically and immediately update the user interface so that users receive immediate feedback based on the input. Chris represented patent owner MasterObjections, Inc. (along with HPC attorneys Leslie Payne and Alden Harris) and succeeded in convincing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to deny institution because the challenged patent was entitled to an earlier priority date than the asserted prior art.
  • Monarch Networking Solutions LLC
    IPR2020-01226, -01227, -01678
    Reexamination Nos. 90/014,701, 90/014,717
  • Arigna Technology Limited
    IPR2021-01263, IPR2022-00481
    Reexamination No. 90/019,015
  • Wapp Tech Limited Partnership and Wapp Tech Corp. v. Wells Fargo Bank / Bank of America. Chris represented Wapp Tech Corp. and Wapp Tech Limited Partnership in patent infringement litigation against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. The lawsuit was filed in August 2021 before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Sherman. Wapp had previously won a jury verdict of $172.5 million in March 2021 against Micro Focus International. That case was subsequently settled for $67.5 million. Wapp’s patents cover software tools used to develop and test applications for mobile devices. This case focused on Wells Fargo’s use of various software tools to create and test its mobile banking applications. Before the notice of settlement was filed in late September 2022, Heim, Payne & Chorush secured a Markman ruling on numerous issues in favor of Wapp. Read more about the case here Wapp Tech Co.’s Resolve Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Wells Fargo (hpcllp.com).
Awards & Honors

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