McKeown, Scott A.

Scott McKeown is a partner in Ropes & Gray’s intellectual property litigation practice and chair of the firm’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) group. He focuses his practice on post-grant patent counseling and litigation matters at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and related appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Scott handles all aspects of post-issuance patent proceedings, specializing in administrative trials before the PTAB, such as inter partes review (IPR) and post-grant review (PGR). He also provides advice on USPTO post-grant proceedings concurrent with complex International Trade Commission (ITC) and district court litigations.

Named one of the world’s leading patent practitioners for post-grant proceedings by Intellectual Asset Management, Scott is the most active PTAB trial attorney in the U.S., having handled more than 250 PTAB matters since 2012, including those in which more than $500 million was at stake. He currently serves as lead post-grant counsel to some of the world’s best-known innovators.

As a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School and a member of the teaching faculty of the Practising Law Institute, Scott lectures and writes extensively on PTAB proceedings. He is a former chair of the American Bar Association, Intellectual Property Law Section Committee 104 (Post-Grant USPTO Proceedings), and was a founding member of the PTAB Bar Association. He is also a contributing editor to the Sedona Conference Working Group 10: Patent Litigation Best Practices. Scott also maintains an award-winning blog, PatentsPostGrant.com, which examines developments in patent litigation, including issues related to USPTO post issuance proceedings. 

Prior to becoming an attorney, Scott worked as an electrical engineer for a government agency, troubleshooting embedded systems and circuit designs. He also has experience across a wide range of related technologies, including computer software, wireless telecommunication protocols, network architectures, e-commerce applications, analog and digital signal processing, and consumer electronics.