Profile: Joseph Kattan

Competition

Biography: Competition

Joseph Kattan is a partner in Gibson Dunn & Crutcher's Washington, DC office. His practice focuses on antitrust litigation, counselling and enforcement agency matters. Mr Kattan's areas of concentration include mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, intellectual property antitrust, high-technology antitrust and international antitrust. He has represented a broad range of companies in antitrust litigation, arbitrations, government investigations, and counselling assignments.

Mr Kattan's representations have spanned a broad range of industries. He has represented clients in the semiconductor, computer, software, media, music, consumer electronics, chemical, medical technology, financial services, oil field services, health care, internet, soft drink, travel, and information services industries, among others.

Mr Kattan has shepherded numerous mergers and acquisitions in a broad range of industries through the antitrust review process. In the M&A area, he most recently represented Intel in its flash memory joint venture with STMicroelectronics, Applied Materials in its acquisitions of Brooks Software and Applied Films, Seagate in its acquisition of Maxtor, Sony Music in its recorded music joint venture with BMG, Conexant Systems in its acquisition of GlobespanVirata and Cadence Design Systems in its acquisitions of Simplex and Plato Design Systems. Other significant M&A assignments include representations of Schlumberger in the merger of its oil field services business with Baker Hughes, PeopleSoft in connection with Oracle's hostile tender offer, Computer Sciences Corporation in connection with Computer Associates' hostile tender offer, Intel in its acquisitions of Chips & Technologies and the manufacturing facilities of Digital Equipment Corporation and Xircom its acquisition by Intel.

Mr Kattan has broad experience in the areas of high-technology and intellectual property antitrust. He has represented clients in a number of significant litigations and government investigations involving the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust, including several standard-setting matters. In the patent antitrust field, he represented Intel in litigations against the Federal Trade Commission, VIA Technologies, and Intergraph Corporation, Unocal in litigation against the FTC and Sony in private antitrust litigations involving patent pooling. Mr Kattan has also represented Intel in various litigations with AMD and before antitrust enforcement agencies in various jurisdictions.

Mr Kattan has served as chair of the intellectual property committee and vice chair of the computer industry committee of the American Bar Association's Section of Antitrust Law. He has published numerous articles in scholarly and professional journals and CLE publications. He has also spoken regularly on antitrust and intellectual property issues at leading antitrust conferences and programmes. He is a member of the board of advisers of The Antitrust Counselor and served for several years as an editor of the American Bar Association's Antitrust Magazine.

Mr Kattan has testified at many government-sponsored hearings on antitrust policy, including the joint Justice Department-Federal Trade Commission hearings on single firm conduct, the DoJ-FTC hearings on intellectual property and antitrust, the DoJ-FTC merger enforcement workshops, the FTC's global competition hearings and the FTC's joint venture policy hearings. In 2004, he served as a member of the ABA's quadrennial task force on the federal antitrust agencies. Mr Kattan has also advised foreign competition authorities on matters of antitrust policy.

Before entering private practice, Mr Kattan headed the Office of Policy and Evaluation in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition.