Bio

Amy Hayden is a partner at Russ August & Kabat, where she focuses her practice on patent litigation. Ms. Hayden has guided her clients through all stages of litigation: pre-litigation diligence, filing complaints, managing discovery, handling claim construction issues, taking and defending depositions, and preparing and taking cases to trial. She is also a registered patent attorney, and has represented both petitioners and patent owners in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings before the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), and has briefed Federal Circuit appeals from both district courts and the PTAB. Through her pro bono work, Ms. Hayden first-chaired a five day jury trial in federal court. She represented a California state prisoner in an Eighth Amendment excessive force case, resulting in a jury award of both compensatory and punitive damages. This was the first prisoner rights case in the Northern District of California with appointed pro bono counsel in which a favorable jury verdict was returned. Ms. Hayden provided the opening statement, conducted the direct examination of the plaintiff, and the cross-examination of both the defense medical expert and two correctional officer defendants. She has also argued before the Ninth Circuit, representing a client pro bono who was seeking compensation from the Department of Labor for injuries her father suffered as a result of radiation exposure. In 2022, Ms. Hayden was named a “Rising Star” by the publishers of Los Angeles Magazine. Prior to joining Russ August & Kabat, Ms. Hayden was a litigation associate at Fenwick & West LLP. Her practice at Fenwick focused on intellectual property and contract matters across a wide variety of industries including software, hardware, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and consumer goods. Ms. Hayden earned her law degree from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall). While in law school, Ms. Hayden externed for the Honorable A. Howard Matz in the Central District of California. Prior to law school, Ms. Hayden obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her doctoral research, for which she received an award for the best Ph.D. thesis in the chemistry department, focused on applying computational methods to better understand chemical and biochemical processes as well as the physical properties of polymeric materials. She also has industry experience related to the design and fabrication of devices for photovoltaic and chemical sensing applications.