Attorney James Hietala

Innovation deserves more than protection. It deserves strategy.

I work with companies that have invested heavily in innovation and need guidance on leveraging intellectual property. 

My role is to help clients evaluate their options and choose strategies that align with their commercial goals.

Strategic Experience in Patent Litigation and IP Assets

My path to patent law began on the engineering side. After graduating in 2000, I worked as a systems engineer on telecommunications products at Lucent Technologies, one of the most innovative technology companies in the world. 

While the work was technically rigorous, I became increasingly interested in how innovation was protected, valued, and contested. That interest led me to join the intellectual property firm Morgan & Finnegan as a patent agent and technical advisor, where I worked on patent prosecution and supported large-scale patent litigation involving telecommunications technology.

I went on to law school and, after graduating in 2006, joined a litigation-focused boutique firm in Minneapolis. There, I represented clients in high-stakes patent disputes and provided portfolio-level consulting for companies with complex intellectual property assets. 

During this period, I appeared dozens of times in federal court and gained extensive hands-on litigation experience. I later spent several years handling generic pharmaceutical (ANDA) litigation and served as second-chair trial counsel in a seven-day federal jury trial involving a consumer product and expert testimony.

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A pivotal chapter of my career began when I was recruited in-house by Intellectual Ventures, then the world’s largest patent aggregator. Over the course of nearly eight years, I led and managed post-grant proceedings across substantial patent portfolios and was responsible for annual budgets ranging from $3 million to $8 million. 

During that time, I was routinely ranked among the most active attorneys in adversarial proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, consistently delivering results that exceeded expectations while maintaining below-average costs. My work contributed to the monetization of patent assets valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

I later joined a large Washington, D.C.-based intellectual property firm, where I focused on business-oriented patent consulting, post-grant proceedings, and strategic matters involving automotive and civil engineering technologies. While the work was engaging, I ultimately wanted a practice model that allowed me to provide more direct, flexible, and strategic counsel to clients.

That motivation led to the founding of Hietala Law.

I am a registered U.S. patent attorney, a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP), a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), and have been repeatedly selected to the IAM Strategy 300, which recognizes the world’s leading IP strategists.

Outside of my practice, I live in the Seattle area with my wife, a capital markets attorney, and our daughter. Before becoming a parent, I traveled extensively, and today I value the flexibility of my practice, both for my clients and for my family.

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Education

  • University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
    • J.D., Law
    • Senior Editor, Law Review
  • Stevens Institute of Technology
    • BEng, Computer Engineering
    • Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society
    • Eta Kappa Nu Electrical & Computer Engineering Honor Society

Accolades & Memberships

  • Selected to the IAM Strategy 300 in 2024 and 2025
  • Certified Licensing Professional (CLP)
  • American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), member