Chiacchio IP, LLC

Focus and practice areas

Chiacchio IP, LLC works in intellectual property law from a base in Chicago, Illinois, with a second office in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, covering the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The firm's practice pages list patents, trade secrets, copyright, trademarks, business transactions, and business litigation.

Those areas fit together in a recognisable way. A company that owns patents usually also owns trademarks, guards internal know-how, and licenses some of it. The firm covers counselling, procuring protection, and adversarial work such as enforcement and defence.

The adversarial side runs in two venues: federal court and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In my opinion, that split matters more than it might look. The two forums use different rules, different evidence standards, and different decision-makers, and a firm doing both keeps a single view of a dispute that could otherwise fragment.

How the team is built

The site names two attorneys. Theodore J. Chiacchio, known as Ted, is the founder and owner. Scott Nyman is Of Counsel, based in Chicago.

Ted holds a bachelor's degree in Biology from Bucknell University and has more than 15 years of law practice involving the Life Sciences. He is licensed in New York and New Jersey, before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and in numerous federal courts.

Courtroom and appellate experience

The about page states that Ted has been involved in five federal district court trials. It also records briefing before the Federal Circuit and the Seventh Circuit.

Those two courts are worth explaining. The Federal Circuit hears almost all U.S. patent appeals, so it is the appellate court that shapes patent doctrine nationally. The Seventh Circuit covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, and it handles trade secret, copyright, and commercial appeals from those states. Briefing in both means the firm has argued patent law at the specialised level and general commercial disputes at the regional one.

Technical ground the firm covers

The firm's work spans the Life Sciences, mechanical, and computer software fields. Patent practice depends heavily on this. A patent attorney reads the invention, understands the science, and then writes claims that a patent examiner will accept and a court will enforce years later.

Ted's biology background lines up with the Life Sciences side of that. Biotech and pharmaceutical patent work involves sequence listings, experimental data, and questions about whether the written description supports what the claims cover. Mechanical and software matters raise different questions, often about how broadly a claim can be drawn before it reads on something already known.

The USPTO side of the work

The firm prepares and prosecutes U.S. patent and trademark applications. It also handles post-grant proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and procures U.S. copyright registrations.

What prosecution involves

Patent prosecution is the back-and-forth with an examiner after an application is filed. The examiner searches prior art, issues rejections, and the applicant amends claims or argues. This runs for years in some technologies. Trademark prosecution follows a similar shape, with examining attorneys reviewing whether a mark is registrable and third parties able to oppose it.

Post-grant proceedings

PTAB proceedings, including inter partes review, let a challenger attack an issued patent's validity at the agency. These run on a statutory timetable and involve expert declarations and depositions. They often run in parallel with district court litigation over the same patent, and the two tracks affect each other. A firm handling both sides of that pairing keeps strategy consistent across them.

Trade secrets and commercial matters

The firm handles trade secret misappropriation matters and related claims under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Trade secret cases usually start when someone leaves a company and information appears to leave with them. Proof turns on what the company did to keep the material secret and on forensic evidence of access and transfer. CFAA claims often accompany these disputes when computer systems are involved.

On the transactional side, the firm negotiates licences of intellectual property rights and conducts due diligence for mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate transactions. IP due diligence checks whether the patents and marks a buyer thinks it is acquiring are properly owned, properly maintained, and free of encumbrances. Assignment gaps and lapsed maintenance fees surface at this stage. Business transactions and business litigation both appear on the firm's practice list, which places this commercial work alongside the IP core.

What the record shows

The firm's public material is specific about credentials and venues. It names the bars Ted is admitted to, the university that granted his degree, the appellate courts he has briefed, and the number of federal trials he has been involved in. As a reviewer, that level of detail is easier to weigh than general statements about capability.

The two-office structure gives the firm a footprint in Chicago and in the New Jersey and New York corridor, and Ted's admissions in New York and New Jersey match the eastern office. USPTO registration applies nationwide, so patent and trademark filing work runs from either location.

Some details a reader might want are absent from the site. The firm does not state a founding year, and it does not list law school or admission year for either attorney. Scott Nyman's listing gives his title and location. Prospective clients weighing a specific matter would get those particulars from the firm directly.

What the site does document is a practice built around one attorney's technical training and litigation record, supported by Of Counsel in Chicago, and organised around patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets in both agency and court settings.

Scott Nyman and the engineering side

Scott Nyman, the firm's Of Counsel, is a registered patent attorney and a founding member of Nyman IP. His degree is in electrical and computer engineering from The Ohio State University, which places an engineer who reads hardware and software next to Ted's training in the life sciences. Registration to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requires a technical degree and a separate examination, so his standing there rests on that engineering background.

His work runs across the same agency practice the firm describes. He drafts and prosecutes patent applications and files and prosecutes trademark applications. He also takes copyright applications through registration. On the contested side, he litigates patent and trademark infringement in federal court, and he has acted for plaintiffs and for defendants.

That last point carries some weight. A lawyer who has argued an infringement case from each side has watched how an opponent frames validity and scope, and that view tends to sharpen how a claim gets written in the first place. It also means the firm can take an enforcement matter or a defense with the same person.

The engineering training matters for the computer software and mechanical fields the firm lists. Patent work in those areas turns on reading a circuit or a block of code accurately before a single claim is drafted. Ted's biology sits at the life sciences end of that range, and Scott's electrical and computer engineering sits at the other.

The Chicago address and phone lines

The Chicago office is at 307 North Michigan Avenue, a downtown business address in the city center. The firm lists two direct phone numbers. One carries a 312 area code for Chicago. The other carries a 732 area code, which covers the central New Jersey coast and matches the Atlantic Highlands office. A caller reaches a given office by dialing its own number.

Two separate area codes point to a real presence in each region. For a client, that means a local line whether a matter sits in Chicago or on the New Jersey coast.