Robert A. Lipstein

Rob Lipstein is a senior counsel in Crowell & Moring’s Antitrust, International Trade, and Intellectual Property groups. As past chair of the firm’s Finance and Contingent Fee Review Committees, Rob spearheaded the firm’s value-based billing and legal project management initiatives, working across practice areas to craft and implement a wide range of alternative fee agreements, and to train the law firm on implementation of LPM. In private practice in Washington, D.C. since 1978, Rob counsels clients on all aspects of antitrust and trade regulation issues, with particular experience on mergers and acquisitions, including pre-merger notification and pre-merger integration planning procedures; product distribution; and the interaction of antitrust and intellectual property laws. Rob has worked extensively with companies in the aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, industrial gases, hazardous waste, consumer electronics, and musical instruments industries. Rob is the architect of distributor and dealer agreements that have become the standards in several industries, and has assisted companies to establish and enforce unilateral Minimum Advertised Price and Minimum Retail Price policies. Rob regularly counsels and represents clients before the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the DOJ regarding mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, competitor collaborations, and compliance with the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Recent transactions include representing Clean Harbors in its $1.25 billion acquisition of Safety-Kleen, United Technologies Corporation in its $16.4 billion purchase of Goodrich Corporation, AT&T in its proposed $39 billion purchase of T- Mobile, Reed Elsevier Group plc in connection with its $544 million purchase of Accuity, its $4 billion purchase of ChoicePoint, Inc., its $4 billion sale of Harcourt Education Group, and its $950 million sale of Harcourt Assessment, Inc., as well as SBC in its $16 billion acquisition of AT&T, and AT&T in its $86 billion acquisition of Bell South. Rob also represented Yamaha Corporation of America in the FTC’s investigation into MAP prices for musical instruments, and follow-on civil litigation, In Re Musical Instruments. In addition to his M&A and distribution focus, Rob regularly counsels clients operating at the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property laws, advising leading technology companies and patent pool administrators on antitrust issues. And with over thirty years of trademark and copyright prosecution and litigation experience, Rob also assists clients to protect their valuable intellectual property rights, and to enforce those rights against misuse, particularly on the Internet. Rob also represents clients in antidumping and countervailing duty investigations and reviews before the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission, as well as the Court of International Trade and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He has written several commentaries on the antidumping law, and on the interaction of the antidumping and antitrust laws, and has also spoken on international panels on these topics. Rob graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 1975, and obtained his law degree in 1978 from Stanford Law School, where he was associate managing editor of the Stanford Law Review. Rob is a fifth degree black belt in taekwondo.