Shamita Etienne-Cummings

Shamita is a partner in the Intellectual Property practice in the Washington, D.C. office and also serves as a member of the Global Board. She serves technology clients by drawing on her business, technical and legal acumen developed over 30 plus years in engineering, law and management. Her experience enables her to take a client-focused business practical approach leading her to become a trusted advisor to many leading global technology companies. Shamita is consistently recognized as a World’s Leading Patent Professionals by IAM Patent 1000 and has earned praises from clients: “Notching up win after win, Shamita is great - she is very aggressive and not shy about going after the best result for her client with all she’s got.” She is also ranked among the top 100 International Trade Commission (ITC) practitioners in the last five years, according to Patexia’s ITC Intelligence Report 2022.

Shamita's industry experience focuses on mobile communication, semiconductor design and processing, media, aerospace, defense, consumer electronic devices and medical devices. She draws on her deep technical knowledge, based on her previous work as an electrical engineer and program manager for GTE Corporation in the mobile telecommunications industry, where she designed and implemented wireless communication and satellite systems.

In addition to being a first chair patent litigator, Shamita represents clients in breach of contract and trade secret matters before district courts, the ITC and the International Commercial Court (ICC), and routinely provides advice to clients on general patent diligence matters.

Shamita joins Allen & Overy from an AmLaw top 10 firm where she had been formerly elected to the Firm’s eight member Global Management Team. While there she also was a member of the firm’s senior leadership team as the Office Executive for the Washington, D.C. office. Shamita is an adjunct professor of law at George Washington University School of Law where she teaches a patent trial course.