Kenneth (Ken) O’Rourke is a partner in the antitrust department at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where his practice focuses on litigating complex cases and high-stakes U.S. and international disputes, as well as defending against government investigations. Ken is based in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office with a continuing presence in California. He represents companies pursuing remedies for wrongful conduct by others, as well as defends companies being sued in complex cases. For more than three decades, Ken has represented established and emerging companies in multi-forum civil litigation, class actions, “bet-the-company” cases, government enforcer investigations, merger litigation, and high-stakes antitrust and intellectual property disputes, including several international matters. His experience includes litigating class actions and other international price-fixing cartel follow-on actions, monopolization and attempted monopolization cases, pending mergers contested by government enforcers and private litigants, IP disputes involving the refusal to license standard essential patents (SEPs) on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms, and pharmaceutical antitrust lawsuits alleging delayed market entry of generic drugs due to reverse payment patent settlements. He is a lawyer admitted to practice in California and the District of Columbia, as well as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales (with current practising certificate) and a former solicitor of the Republic of Ireland. Ken is recognized by leading industry publications. Chambers Global 2022: Antitrust - USA Cartel states that he is “highly regarded for his antitrust cartel work” and Chambers USA: California Antitrust 2019 reports that he is “a spectacular lawyer” who “takes on large-scale civil and criminal antitrust litigation.” Global Competition Review’s 2016 edition of Who’s Who Legal - Competition called Ken “one of California’s foremost litigators” and praised him for both his competition and IP experience. In 2019 and 2020, the publication honored Ken as being among the world’s “Competition Thought Leaders,” noting that peers extol him as “a really excellent antitrust litigator.” Prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Ken was a senior antitrust and business litigation partner with another top law firm, where he practiced law for nearly 35 years in California and (more recently) Washington, D.C. He also served for nearly 18 months as the interim chief legal officer of Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), one of the country’s largest health insurers and operator of the BlueCross BlueShield health plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
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This article has been nominated for the 2016 Antitrust Writing Awards. Click here to learn more about the Antitrust Writing Awards. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has reached a settlement resolving its claims that Cephalon, Inc. violated the antitrust laws by entering into reverse (...)
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But Decision Raises as Many Questions as it Answers The Supreme Court yesterday held that it may be unlawful under the antitrust laws for a brand-name drug manufacturer to resolve patent litigation against an allegedly infringing generic drug maker by paying the generic to forestall market (...)
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The authors of this Trends focus on several decisions delivered in the United States and in Europe, related to pay-for-delay settlements in the pharmaceutical sector. This type of settlements has spread in the past few years, and aim to postpone the arrival of generics on the market, with (...)
