Joseph Kattan, PC, is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, DC, office. His practice focuses on antitrust litigation, counseling, 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 clients in antitrust litigation, arbitrations, government investigations, and counseling 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, cosmetics, 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 through the antitrust review process in the United States and abroad, including many second-request investigations. His M&A transactions include representations of:

Intel in its acquisitions of McAfee, Wind River, Chips & Technologies, and the manufacturing assets of Digital Equipment, among others, as well as in the formation and subsequent sale of its Numonyx flash memory joint venture with STMicroelectronics;
Applied Materials in its acquisitions of Varian Semiconductor, Brooks Software, Baccini, Applied Films, and Semitool;
Seagate in its acquisition of Maxtor;
Sony Music in its merger with BMG;
Cadence Design Systems in its acquisitions of Denali Software, Verisity, Simplex, and Plato Design Systems, among others;
Ralston in the sale of its pet food division to Nestle;
Conexant Systems in its acquisition of GlobespanVirata;
Schlumberger in the merger of its oil field services business with Baker Hughes;
PeopleSoft in connection with its acquisition of JD Edwards and opposition to Oracle’s hostile tender offer; and
Computer Sciences Corporation in connection with Computer Associates’ hostile tender offer.

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 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 programs. He is a member of the Board of Advisors 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 DOJ-FTC hearings on most favored nation contracts, the FTC’s global competition hearings, the FTC’s joint venture policy hearings, and the FTC’s “FTC at 100” hearings. Mr. Kattan has also advised foreign competition authorities on matters of antitrust policy.

Mr. Kattan is a member of the U.S Chamber of Commerce’s Antitrust Council. In 2004, he served as a member of the ABA’s quadrennial Task Force on the Federal Antitrust Agencies.

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

Mr. Kattan is recognized as a leading antitrust practitioner in An International Who’s Who of Competition Lawyers, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, The Expert Guide to the World’s Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers, Chambers America’s Leading Business Lawyers, Chambers Global The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Global Counsel Competition Law Handbook, Practical Law’s Which Lawyer, Benchmark Litigation’s America’s Leading Litigation Firms and Attorneys, The Best Lawyers in America, and Washington DC Super Lawyers.

Recent editions of Chambers have described Mr. Kattan as a “super-smart outstanding legal analyst” who “receives rave reviews” from clients and peers and as “a world-class expert in competition law” who “attracts a host of plaudits from clients” and offers “very pragmatic advice.”