Floyd R. Nation

Floyd has served as Chairman of the Intellectual Property Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, President of the Austin Intellectual Property Law Association, is a Life Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and a founding member and leader of The Honorable Nancy F. Atlas Intellectual Property American Inn of Court.  For many years he taught the course on patent litigation as an Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas School of Law.

Until May 2015, Floyd Nation was a partner at Winston & Strawn LLP, an international law firm with nearly 1,000 attorneys.  Prior to joining Winston, he was a partner in the law firms of Howrey LLP and Arnold, White & Durkee.  He recently relocated to San Antonio to continue concentrating on IP matters.

Floyd has been a successful trial lawyer for over 40 years, specializing in patent infringement litigation.  He has tried cases concerning a variety of medical devices, oil field and construction equipment, food processing, semiconductor devices and manufacturing, software and pharmaceuticals.
 
As lead trial counsel, he obtained a $45 million jury verdict in a semiconductor case, settled a medical device case near the end of trial for almost $50 million and in another matter was awarded judgment as a matter of law, thereby avoiding a $75 million verdict.  Floyd has argued multiple appeals before the Federal Circuit and the Patent and Trademark Office boards.  

Before practicing law in Austin and Houston, he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech where he was a member of Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma honor societies.  He currently serves on that school’s Board of Advisors.  Upon graduation, he worked for Humble Oil (now Exxon Mobil) in the production and reservoir engineering groups.  Floyd left Humble Oil to attend The University of Texas School of Law where he received his JD degree with honors.  He is admitted to practice in Texas and Louisiana and before the U.S. Supreme Court, various federal circuit and district courts as well as the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Floyd has completed 40 hours of mediation training at the A.A. White Dispute Resolution Center of the University of Houston Law Center and conducted over 15 mediations.

Floyd has been named a “Texas Super Lawyer” in each year since the award was established and was recognized by the Who’s Who Legal Guide to the best attorneys in Texas that described him as a “notable adversary in the area of patent law.”  Chambers U.S.A. has consistently ranked him among the premier patent litigators in Texas and noted his “ abundant amount of experience dealing with patent litigation.”  He has been named to The Best Lawyers In America for more than 20 years and Houston’s “Trademark Lawyer of the Year” in 2013.  In 2013 and 2014 Floyd was named an “IP Star” by Managing Intellectual Property. From 2012 to the present, he has been recognized in Intellectual Assist Management (IAM) in their “IAM Patent 1000 – The World’s Leading Patent Practitioners.”  IAM also noted that “he is well respected by federal judges in Texas and other jurisdictions” and “has a big-picture perspective gained through nearly four decades of experience as a patent trial lawyer.”