Profile: David J Stewart

Trademarks

Biography: Trademarks

David Stewart is the head of Alston & Bird's Atlanta trademark group and a member of the firm's intellectual property litigation group. He concentrates his practice on trademark, copyright, internet, trade secret, advertising and technology litigation and counselling.

Mr Stewart has served as lead trial counsel in a number of precedent-setting intellectual property cases in federal district and appellate courts located throughout the United States, including successfully defending Warner Bros in a copyright and trademark lawsuit involving the motion picture, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, in which the Eleventh Circuit became the first federal circuit court to rule that an artist cannot acquire trademark rights in an artistic style.

For the past few years, technology and internet-related cases have been at the core of Mr Stewart's practice, with representative engagements including CNN in several significant domain name cases in the Eastern District of Virginia, including a case involving the first TRO issued in an in rem action under the ACPA and a case in which the court ruled that all jurisdiction is proper in the district over all dot-com domain names because of the presence of the registry (not registrar) in the forum.

Mr Stewart received his JD from Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he was associate managing editor of Vanderbilt Law Review, and his AB, summa cum laude, from Wabash College. Between college and law school, Mr Stewart worked as a computer systems analyst for the Allison Gas Turbine Division of General Motors.