David Balto
David Balto is a public interest antitrust lawyer in Washington, DC. He has over 15 years of government antitrust experience as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and in several senior level positions at the Federal Trade Commission. David was the Policy Director of the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission (1998-2001) and attorney advisor to Chairman Robert Pitofsky (1995-1997). He was a senior advisor in all aspects of the FTC’s merger and non- merger enforcement program and helped litigate the challenges to the Staples/Office Depot, Drug Wholesalers, and Heinz/Beechnut mergers, the Intel monopolization case, and the challenges to anticompetitive conduct by several pharmaceutical companies.
David was involved in several key FTC cases involving high tech and IP including Dell Computer, Rambus, Intel, and several pharmaceutical mergers. David contributed to the FTC/DOJ Intellectual Property Guidelines and he authored several articles on IP antitrust issues. He is the only individual to win the FTC Award for Outstanding Scholarship twice.
David frequently testifies before Congress on high tech competition issues. He has authored amicus briefs in several antitrust and IP cases and his brief in Broadcom v. Qualcomm was favorably cited by the Third Circuit.
Recent Posts
May 16, 2013
As Josh Lamel noted the other day, end-users such as retailers, financial services, grocery stores, advertising, hotel industries, and even oil companies are coming out in droves to fight abusive patent troll tactics. The FTC has posted all 68 public comments submitted to its patent assertion entity workshop; a surprising number come from end-users.
Patent trolls have started to target end-users, especially small companies, because they typically lack the expertise, experience and ability to fight questionable claims. Litigation costs can quickly mount up to $250,000 to $500,000, and reach millions if the case goes all the way through trial (not to mention appeals). End-users also have to deal with disruptions to their business from discovery requests and managing the litigation. Often companies are forced to divulge secret financial and technical information as well as divert key personnel from their work to participate in depositions and give testimony. Patent trolls, on the other hand, have few costs in pursuing a suit because they do not operate in any market. The lawsuit has no disruptive effect on the patent troll’s business because it is the patent troll’s business.