Profile: Mark Ostrau

Competition

Biography: Competition

Mark Ostrau is co-chair of the antitrust practice and a member of the intellectual property and technology transactions groups at Fenwick & West LLP, a Silicon Valley-based law firm specialising in high technology industries and matters. Mr Ostrau practises from the firm's Silicon Valley office in Mountain View, California. He assists high-technology companies in acquisitions, licences and other technology-related transactions, and advises clients on a wide variety of antitrust, marketing, intellectual property and intellectual property misuse issues.

Mr Ostrau's practice includes regularly representing clients before various government antitrust agencies in connection with the US Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and other antitrust and competition law aspects of acquisitions worldwide. He has personally handled over 150 filings with the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice antitrust sections specifically responsible for high-technology matters, including many of the most significant recent transactions in the industry, such as Cisco Systems's acquisition of Scientific Atlanta, Symantec Corporation's acquisition of VERITAS Software and Macromedia's sale to Adobe Systems. He also provides in-depth counselling on relationships with competitors, customers and suppliers, and with respect to establishing and participating in licensing, distribution, marketing, standard-setting and patent pooling programmes. He has represented scores of large and small companies across the information technology and life sciences industries. In addition to Cisco Systems and Symantec, notable companies he has represented include Intuit, VeriSign, Sun Microsystems and CooperVision.

Mr Ostrau focuses on knowing the client's industry to provide practical solutions to legal and business problems. He has authored or presented numerous articles and speeches on a variety of antitrust and licensing topics relevant to technology industries and was a contributing author to the ABA antitrust section handbook Intellectual Property Misuse: Licensing and Litigation (2000), as well as the 2005 edition of the California CEB publication Sales and Mergers of California Businesses. He is often quoted in industry and general media on antitrust topics. In addition, he regularly provides educational seminars for high-technology companies regarding antitrust and distribution issues.

Mr Ostrau received a BA in Economics (with distinction) in 1982 from Yale University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He received his law degree from Stanford University in 1985, where he clerked with the antitrust division of the US Department of Justice. He is a past chair of the high-technology law section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association, and is a member of the American Bar Association sections on antitrust law and intellectual property law.