Nicole Galli

Practice Areas

Nicole focuses her practice on commercial litigation, including all forms of intellectual property (IP) litigation, and IP counseling, especially regarding IP protection strategies including for trade secret management. Nicole has over thirty years of experience handling complex technical cases, typically involving patents or trade secrets. Since her first patent case in the early 1990s, she has also frequently been asked to handle matters involving disputes over the ownership of intellectual property, including involving disputes about joint invention or independent development.

Nicole has litigated and tried technical cases and a wide variety of other Intellectual Property and business disputes for clients in federal and state courts across the country, as well as in administrative forums, and in international and domestic arbitration. Nicole also has deep experience in representing clients in dozens of mediations and settlement conferences before both private mediators and the judiciary. She represents clients in IP matters such as patent infringement and licensing litigation, trademark matters including infringement, as well as opposition and cancellation before the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, trade dress infringement, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets claims. She also has extensive experience with many other types of business disputes including breach of contract, restrictive covenant, tortious interference, antitrust, consumer fraud and class action matters.

Nicole also counsels clients on IP portfolio acquisition, management, enforcement and monetization, with particular experience in helping clients identify previously untapped IP assets in their business as well as best practices for the governance and management of trade secrets.

Career

Nicole founded her law firm in 2015, after spending over two decades at two AmLaw 100 firms (first Dewey Ballantine LLP, in New York, and then Pepper Hamilton LLP (now Troutman Pepper) in Philadelphia, where she was a partner, as well as an IP boutique firm, and a full-service regional firm. Nicole's firm is still 100% women-owned and has been certified as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) since 2017. With six attorneys spread across three offices from New York, to Philadelphia, to Washington D.C., the firm has been listed among the top 15 fastest growing companies in the Greater Philadelphia region for the last three years.

Professional Memberships

Nicole serves on the Sedona Conference Working Group on Trade Secrets (WG12) Steering Committee, where she co-chaired the team that developed a Commentary on the Governance and Management of Trade Secrets and currently co-chairs the team developing model jury instructions under the Defend Trade Secrets Act. Nicole served as Vice Chair of the IP in the Supply Chain Committee, which developed an ANSI standard for protecting trade secrets and other IP in the supply chain for the LES’s IP Management Standards Project.

Nicole is a member of the American Bar Association, where she has served in a number of capacities including as the CLE Officer of the Section of Intellectual Property Law from 2016 to 2018 and as the Section’s Liaison to the Commission on Women from 2021-2023. She currently serves as the IP Section’s first Diversity Officer, and as a member of the Section’s Council. Nicole also currently serves as the Section Officers Conference Liaison to the ABA’s Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council for the 2023-2024 bar year.

Publications

Nicole is a frequent speaker, author and thought leader on issues impacting women attorneys and entrepreneurs, as well as on various legal topics including intellectual property strategy, trade secrets protection and litigation, trademark, copyright and patent law and litigation, commercial litigation best practices and procedural matters, restrictive covenants, and the legal impact of emerging technologies such as AI. In addition to other publications, Nicole and her team maintain a monthly blog on the firm's website where they address a variety of topics including cutting edge issues in the law, such as around AI.

Clients

Nicole has worked in litigation and counseling capacities with clients in various industries including energy, renewable materials, life sciences, healthcare, software, electronics, quantitative/algorithmic trading, consumer products, automotive, hospitality, food and beverage, fashion, media, construction, manufacturing, marketing and other service providers. Her clients include individuals, start-ups, large national and multi-national companies, as well as cultural institutions and non-profits.

Education

Expert in these Jurisdictions

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware (inactive)

U.S. Supreme Court

U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Federal Circuits

U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, District of Delaware (inactive), Southern District of Illinois, Eastern District of Michigan, District of New Jersey, Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern District of Texas