Profile: Daniel G Swanson

Competition

Biography: Competition

Daniel G Swanson has co-chaired Gibson Dunn & Crutcher's antitrust practice since 1996, and specialises in domestic and international antitrust and competition law, including civil and appellate litigation, class actions, cartel matters and grand jury investigations, mergers, and counselling. A member of the California Bar, Mr Swanson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1984 and holds PhD and Masters degrees in economics from Harvard University, where he was a teaching fellow.

For more than 20 years, Mr Swanson has had an active antitrust litigation practice dealing with a wide range of antitrust issues in trial and appellate courts throughout the US. He has litigated claims of alleged monopolisation, predation, leveraging, bundling, tying, exclusive dealing, price fixing, group boycott, refusal to deal, collusion and price discrimination, among others, and has handled scores of class action lawsuits in state and federal court throughout the United States.

Mr Swanson regularly handles international antitrust matters for US, European, and Asian clients, is a member of Gibson Dunn's international management committee and frequently works out of its Brussels office. He has served as co-chair of the ABA Antitrust Section's International Committee (2002-06) and as editor-in-chief of the Antitrust Section's First Supplement to Competition Laws Outside the United States (2005). Mr Swanson is also active in the Antitrust Committee of the International Bar Association, serving on the editorial board of the IBA's publication Competition Law International.

Mr Swanson frequently represents clients in connection with cartel investigations, plea and immunity negotiations, and amnesty/leniency applications (and related activities in the European Union, Japan, Australia, Canada and Mexico). He has been a non-governmental adviser (NGA) in connection with the cartels working group of the International Competition Network. Mr Swanson also represents clients in connection with mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, including domestic and foreign merger-clearance matters and merger-related civil litigation.

Mr Swanson regularly represents high-technology and entertainment industry clients in antitrust matters involving intellectual property and testified in the 2002 DoJ-FTC joint hearings regarding competition and intellectual property law and policy. He represented the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association, the National Football League, the Business Software Alliance and other intellectual property holders as amicus curiae in the Supreme Court's landmark case, Illinois Tools Works v Independent Ink (2006), holding that antitrust market power may not be presumed from IP ownership. His writings with Professor William J Baumol ("Reasonable and Nondiscriminatory (RAND) Royalties", "Standards Selection', and 'Control of Market Power", 73 Antitrust LJ 1 (2005); "The New Economy and Ubiquitous Competitive Price Discrimination: Identifying Defensible Criteria of Market Power", 70 Antitrust LJ 661 (2003)) have been cited and relied on by the US Supreme Court, the Federal Trade Commission and the US Court of Appeal. Mr Swanson also serves as an adviser (NGA) to the ICN Unilateral Conduct Working Group in its work focused on monopolisation and dominance law.

Mr Swanson speaks regularly on antitrust topics, contributes to leading journals and treatises and is on the board of editors of the LexisNexis Antitrust Report.