Donald Falk has an extensive appellate practice in which he presents oral
arguments, briefs, and motions in the US Supreme Court, and many other federal
and state appellate and trial courts. His work involves a wide range of
constitutional, statutory, patent, securities, administrative, criminal and
common law issues. Don has won a unanimous judgment before the United States
Supreme Court and has successfully briefed and argued cases before the highest
courts of California, Delaware, Maryland and Texas. He has much experience with
California's broad unfair competition law (Business & Professions Code § 17200).
Don frequently briefs in the California state appellate courts (arguing 10
cases) and federal appellate courts (three Ninth Circuit cases). Many of those
cases involved preemption under the Federal Arbitration Act.
Much of Don's work has involved antitrust issues for clients in the
technology, pharmaceutical and other industries. He served as counsel for the
Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Software and Information
Industry Association in the Microsoft antitrust case. His amicus brief in that
case, as Professor Calkins noted in the Antitrust Law Journal (Vol. 68,
p. 625), was called "an excellent brief," by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who
made it a focus of an entire afternoon's questioning. "No one can say that
antitrust amicus efforts are ignored," Professor Calkins stated. In the same
article Calkins credited Don's brief for the NCAA as a prime influence on the
pro-defendant formulation of the legal standard in California Dental Ass'n v.
FTC, 526 U.S. 756 (1999).
Don's work on patent issues includes extensive work on two cases helping
patentees enforce their patents against imitators who produced insubstantial
variants (i.e., "equivalents") of particular elements of claimed inventions. He
has further addressed claim construction, patent ownership, and divided
infringement issues, along with more typical infringement briefing,
predominantly involving computer technology. Don also has briefed appeals in
securities fraud and derivative actions. In addition, he has prepared major
motions at the trial level on antitrust, arbitration, class action, and
securities issues, among others. His experience also includes matters focusing
on telecommunications, health care and employment law.
Don joined the firm in 1991 following his service as Law Clerk to The
Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit, 1990-1991.
Don Falk is a co-author of Mayer Brown's Federal Appellate Practice treatise, published by BNA Books in December 2008.