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Practice Group Leaders:
Antitrust and unfair competition cases are often costly because of attorneys' fees and potential fines
and damages. Even more importantly, however, such claims often strike at the core of a company's business
strategy and demand the attention of key management. To be effective in representing clients in this
challenging and complex area of the law, attorneys must combine a deep understanding of the client's
business, the substantive laws, and the litigation and administrative processes through which the laws
are enforced. The Antitrust and Unfair Competition Group at Fenwick & West LLP is well positioned to
represent clients aggressively, efficiently, and effectively in this difficult and constantly changing
area of the law. Our practice includes both highly sophisticated counseling and complex litigation, and
our experience in each area complements and enhances our abilities in the other.
Transactions and Counseling.
We are often retained to advise clients in transactions that potentially
raise difficult competitive issues. Our goal is to provide advice that minimizes risk and yet gives the
client the maximum flexibility to realize its business objectives. We have advised clients on virtually
every area of antitrust and unfair competition law, including misuse of intellectual property,
standard setting organizations, licensing restrictions, marketing
and distribution practices, pricing issues, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions. Of these areas,
our active mergers and acquisitions practice deserves special mention. We are particularly experienced in
advising on the substantive antitrust law and enforcement guidelines affecting such transactions and in
helping our clients successfully navigate the complicated pre-merger notification and review processes at
the United States Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the European Union, and other
jurisdictions. Our firm has been involved in hundreds of such transactions. Furthermore, one of the partners
in our group was the principal draftsman of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines used by the federal enforcement
agencies. As the Merger Guidelines make clear, the central and threshold issue in every merger review, as
with most antitrust cases, is the definition of the "relevant market" in which to evaluate the competitive
effect. Through the numerous transactions and regular counseling matters we have handled, we have developed
deep institutional knowledge and strong analytical capabilities with respect to this fundamental issue,
particularly in the technology and life sciences industries in which many of our clients operate. In addition
to advising about proposed transactions, we also assist our clients in identifying and eliminating potential
problems through prophylactic antitrust audits of the aspects of their operations that pose particular risks.
Litigation.
Our litigators have represented clients from a wide variety of industries in federal and state court cases
involving the full range of antitrust and unfair competition issues. In addition to private civil litigation,
our lawyers have experience representing clients in a variety of civil and criminal investigations by the
Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general.
Although much of the litigation we handle is in California, we are regularly retained
to represent clients in cases throughout the United States and occasionally in foreign jurisdictions. We have
an extensive network of excellent local counsel ready to assist us in such cases. In California, especially
fertile sources of competition-related cases are the California Cartwright Act and California Business and
Professions Code 17200, and our attorneys have extensive experience litigating cases under those laws.
Industry Expertise.
While we have significant experience in cases involving a wide range of industries, we have extraordinary
depth in transactions and cases involving the types of technology and life sciences companies that
have made Silicon Valley famous. In these types of matters, few firms can match the resources and "domain
knowledge" that we can marshal to solve a client's problem. Success or failure in antitrust and unfair
competition cases often turns on an understanding of how competition operates in the client's industry.
This in turn requires an understanding of the client's technology, how it has been developed, and the
markets in which it is sold or licensed. The lawyers in our group have deep experience in technology
cases that allows them to identify problems and develop solutions that lawyers less experienced with
technology cases might never see. But the resources at Fenwick & West do not end with our group. The
Intellectual Property and
Corporate Groups at Fenwick & West are nationally recognized
and include many attorneys with extensive experience representing technology companies ranging from
startups to the leaders in their market segments. A number of these lawyers have advanced degrees in the
relevant sciences and technologies. These highly experienced lawyers provide an integral part of the expertise
and knowledge that we are able to apply to our clients' competition matters.
Document Management.
Antitrust and trade regulation litigation matters tend to be document intensive. The most successful lawyer
in such cases is often the lawyer who can both aggressively pursue the other side's documents and manage
voluminous discovery materials in a cost effective way. The challenges of the discovery process in complex
commercial cases have been magnified by the increasing tendency for documents to be electronic rather than
paper. Our firm has been at the forefront of the development of the law relating to electronic discovery.
We have computerized document management systems in place that allow us to meet the high throughput these
cases require for document collection, production and analysis. These
capabilities are described in more detail by clicking on
the hyperlink.
Client Orientation.
Although not every antitrust or unfair competition case is a huge case, they are often larger and more
complex than a typical commercial case. It is therefore critical to have the resources necessary to defend
or prosecute a case correctly, and we have the critical mass of skilled litigators necessary to handle even
the largest and most complex cases. While we can draw on a large body of lawyers when necessary, our
preference and style is to staff cases leanly, both because doing so saves the client money and generally
produces the best result.
Related services include Intellectual Property and Litigation.
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