John Keville Named 2025 Intellectual Property Attorney of the Year
Houston Office Managing Partner John Keville was recognized as the “Intellectual Property Attorney of the Year” at Texas Lawyer’s 2025 Texas Legal Awards. The annual awards honor professional excellence in the Texas legal community. Additionally, Sheppard Mullin’s Texas Intellectual Property practice was also named a finalist in the “Litigation Practice of the Year – Intellectual Property” category.
Keville’s series of significant victories in the courtroom over the past year earned him the title. He led a team that won a hard-fought case for hip-hop moguls T.I. and Tameka “Tiny” Harris against toy manufacturer MGA Entertainment. Keville and his team obtained a $71 million jury verdict for the Harrises and their musical group, the OMG Girlz, with the jury finding that counterclaim-defendant MGA Entertainment willfully infringed the OMG Girlz’s trade dress and likeness. The highly publicized verdict helps protect creatives from their trade dress or personas being used for profit without their permission.
Keville also achieved a significant win for Thrive Pet Healthcare (formerly Pathway Vet Alliance) in a breach of contract dispute. Ultimately, the court rejected the plaintiff’s claims and ruled in Thrive’s favor on several of its counterclaims, issuing a final award of $20 million. Both victories demonstrate Keville’s skill in developing effective litigation strategies and achieving favorable results for clients in complex, high-stakes IP disputes.
The winners of the Texas Legal Awards were announced at a ceremony in Dallas on September 25, 2025
Read Keville’s Texas Lawyer Q&A here. (A subscription is required).