Attorney Biographies

Robert L. Wagner 
Four Gateway Center
444 Liberty Avenue, Suite 1105
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222-1220

Communication Center 
Phone: 412-288-4387
Fax: 412-288-2405
E-mail: rwagner@psmn.com
Web site: http://www.psmn.com

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Position	Areas of Practice	Education
Honors	Published Works	Affiliations

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Robert Wagner's practice focuses on complex commercial litigation and intellectual property law. Dr. Wagner is an accomplished litigator with a strong background in civil litigation involving technical issues, such as patent infringement and trade secret litigation in the computer, electrical, and mechanical fields, as well as complex commercial and corporate litigation matters, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and RICO litigation.

Before joining Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, Dr. Wagner practiced law at Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP in Chicago, where he successfully represented numerous Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies in patent infringement and complex commercial cases.

In addition to his litigation work, Dr. Wagner is licensed to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, where he has prosecuted patents on behalf of his clients. With his strong scientific and technical training, Dr. Wagner is well-positioned to handle complex patents, especially in the optical, electrical, computer, and mechanical fields.

Dr. Wagner handles all phases of litigation, from inception, through discovery and pre-trial motion practice, to trial, and finally to post-trial motion practice. Dr. Wagner has extensive experience taking and defending depositions and examining witnesses at trial, as well as arguing motions before the court.

Current Employment Position(s):

Associate, since 2010

Areas of Practice:

Litigation

Intellectual Property

Bar Admissions:

Pennsylvania, 2010

Illinois, 2001

U.S. District Court Central District of Illinois, 2007

U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois, 2003

U.S. District Court Northern District of Ohio, 2003

U.S. District Court Western District of Pennsylvania, 2010

U.S. Court of Appeals 6th Circuit, 2002

U.S. Court of Appeals 7th Circuit, 2003

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, 2009

Education:

Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, Ohio, May, 2001
J.D.
Honors: Magna Cum Laude
Honors: Order of the Coif
Honors: Law Review: Case Western Reserve Law Review, 2000-2001

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1998
Ph.D.

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1995
M.S.
Major:  Applied Physics

Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California, 1992
B.S.
Major:  Physics

Published Works:

Electron Acceleration by a Laser Wakefield in a Relativistically Self-Guided Channel,, Phys. Rev. Lett.,, vol. 78, p. 3125, 1997

High-resolution optical chirped pulse gating,, Journal of Applied Optics, vol. 36, p. 2603, 1997

Nonlinear Optics with Relativistic Unbound Electrons,, Science, vol. 273, p. 472, 1996

U.S. Patent No. 5,293,218Interferometric JFTOT tube deposit measuring device, 1994

Honors and Awards:

CALI Award for Highest Grade in Torts, 1998

CALI Award for Highest Grade in Admiralty, 2000

CALI Award for Highest Grade in Complex Federal Criminal Prosecution, 2000

CALI Award for Highest Grade in Products Liability, 2000

Professional Associations and Memberships:

American Bar Association

Member

Illinois State Bar Association

Member

American Physical Society

Optical Society of America

Pennsylvania State Bar Association

Past Employment Positions:

Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP (Chicago, IL), Associate, 2003 - 2010

The Honorable Kathleen M. O'Malley, United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Law Clerk, 2001 - 2003

Birth Information:

1970, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America

 

 

Latest Business and Legal News

These news items and case summaries are a service provided by FindLaw. Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. does not endorse any service or product advertised or discussed in any of these items.

Business

[02/03] Japanese entrepreneurs aim for Silicon Valley

Intellectual Property

[01/31] EU probes Samsung over wireless patents

Insurance

[02/03] Aon Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 Results

Environment

[02/03] Pet elk denied re-entry to Pennsylvania from W.Va.

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Case Summaries

Intellectual Property

[02/01] Thorner v. Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC
In a patent infringement action concerning a patent relating to a tactile feedback system for computer video games, the district court's judgment of noninfringement upon stipulation is vacated and the case remanded, where: 1) the district court improperly limited the term "attached to said pad" to mean attachment only to an external surface, and the parties based the stipulation of noninfringement on the district court's erroneous construction of this claim; and 2) the district court erred in its construction of the term "flexible."

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[01/27] Krippelz v. Ford Motor Co.
In a patent infringement case involving a vehicle-mounted lamp, the district court's denial of the defendant's motion for judgment as a matter of law on invalidity is reversed, its summary judgment of infringement is vacated, and the case is remanded for entry of judgment of nonliability for the defendant, where the district court committed reversible error in its holdings that: 1) a reasonable jury could find that a competing French patent failed to teach the required "conical beam of light;" and 2) the jury could have reasonably found the French patent to lack a lamp "adjacent to the window."

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Insurance Law

[02/03] Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Co. v. Roberts
In a suit brought by an insurer seeking a declaratory judgment that it was required to indemnify its insured for no more than 40 percent of a state court judgment because it had covered its insured for no more than 40 percent of the time in which the state court plaintiff was exposed to lead poisoning, the district court's judgment is: 1) affirmed in part, where it was correct in allocating the insurer's liability using the pro-rata time on-the-risk, and its decision to use the plaintiff's date of birth as the starting point for the period in which she was exposed to lead poisoning was sound; and 2) reversed in part, where the district court erred in holding the insurer liable for 24 months of coverage rather than 22, since under the insurance contract, coverage ended when the property was sold.

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[02/03] Scandinavian Reinsurance Co. Ltd. v. Saint Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co.
The district court's grant of a petition to vacate an arbitral award is reversed, and on remand the district court is instructed to grant a cross-petition to confirm the award, where there was insufficient evidence before the district court on which to base a finding of "evident partiality" within the meaning of the Federal Arbitration Act despite the failure of two arbitrators to disclose their concurrent service as arbitrators in another, arguably similar, arbitration.

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Environmental Law

[02/03] Pacific Rivers Council v. US Forest Service
In a suit challenging Forest Service amendments to the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan as inconsistent with the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act, the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Forest Service is: 1) reversed in part, where the plaintiff had Article III standing, and the failure of the environmental impact statement (EIS) to provide any analysis of the environmental consequences on individual fish species was a failure to comply with the hard look requirement of NEPA; and 2) affirmed in part, insofar as the Forest Service did take a hard look at environmental consequences on amphibians in the EIS, in compliance with NEPA.

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[01/26] Chevron Corp. v. Naranjo
In a case in which a potential judgment-debtor sought a global anti-enforcement injunction against defendants from the Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, prohibiting them from attempting to enforce an allegedly fraudulent judgment entered by an Ecuadorian court, the district court's grant of the injunction is reversed with orders to dismiss the claim, where the district court erred in construing New York’s Uniform Foreign Country Money-Judgments Recognition Act to grant the putative judgment-debtors a cause of action to challenge foreign judgments before enforcement of those judgments was sought.

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Commercial Law

[02/01] In re American Express Merchants' Litigation
In a class action asserting Sherman Act claims, brought against a charge card issuer whose card acceptance agreement purported to preclude a merchant from bringing a class action lawsuit, the district court's grant of the defendant's motion to compel arbitration and dismissal of the case is reversed, where the cost of plaintiffs' individually arbitrating their dispute with the defendant would be prohibitive, effectively depriving them of the statutory protections of the antitrust laws, and thus the class action waiver in the arbitration provision was unenforceable.

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[01/27] C9 Ventures v. SVC-West, L.P.
In a personal injury suit in which a lessor of helium-filled tanks used to inflate festive balloons cross-complained against the lessee to enforce an indemnification provision on the back of an unsigned invoice, the trial court's judgment in favor of the lessor and award of attorney fees to it is reversed, where: 1) the lessee did not manifest assent to the terms on the back of the unsigned invoice by course of dealing or course of performance, or under basic contract law; 2) the lessee did not sign the invoice or otherwise expressly agree to its terms; 3) an unsigned invoice itself is not a contract, and repeated delivery of a particular form does not make the form part of the parties' agreement; 4) payment of the invoice merely constituted the lessee's performance of the obligation under the oral contract to pay for the rental of the helium-filled tanks; and 5) assuming the transaction was a sale of goods covered by division 2 of the California Commercial Code, the indemnification provision was not an additional term of the contract under section 2207 of the Commercial Code.

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