269 Millennium - A Marquis Who’s Who Magazine LAW AND LAW ENFORCEMENT postgraduate work in competition law at Oxford University. Midway through an MPhil thesis, he returned to assist in AT&T’s defense until the 1982 divestiture decree, which, he notes, was a “reverse” acquisition. Then, at Brace & North, he helped Ohio-Sealy in its antitrust battle against Sealy Inc. Ohio parlayed its antitrust judgments into near-total ownership of Sealy, then itself was acquired for $965 million. Mr. North’s next two cases illustrate his “means or end” approach to acquisitions. After a 1983 decision gave the GORE-TEX™ patent (on ePTFE) a glowing endorsement, W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. sued C.R. Bard Inc., a large competing maker of ePTFE vascular grafts. Bard promptly caved. Gore then sued IMPRA Inc., its smaller and only-remaining competitor. Mr. North devised a novel workaround to avoid the 1983 decision using statistics to prove that Gore-Tex was identical to prior art ePTFE. Then, he exposed Gore’s attempt to maintain its monopoly when its patent proved invalid. Poetic justice was served when Bard acquired IMPRA for $143.2 million, re-entered the market, and sued Gore for $1 billion. Mr. North next defended 28-month-old Mintec Inc. against Datascope Corp. over rights to a pioneer stent patent. Using multiple litigations to force a settlement offer, Mr. North got Boston Scientific to loan Mintec the money while it considered a bid. One month after Boston’s winning $72 million bid, Mr. North settled an antitrust class action, on remand from the Supreme Court. After retiring in Monaco at 45, he resumed practice in 2003 to represent mobile-point-of-sale inventor Ken Bailey. He served in board and executive roles at an IT company Bailey co-founded with tech visionary Paul Mula and is now girding himself for industry-wide litigation involving another Bailey patent. Mr. North attributes much of his success to his sheer tenacity. Leveraging nearly 50 years of experience in courtroom and corporate settings, Gerald D.W. North is known for high-stakes litigation and the use of acquisitions as a litigation tactic or exit strategy. His laser focus on acquisitions began with a summer clerkship at Sidley Austin LLP in 1974, the year the Department of Justice filed its antitrust case to break up AT&T. It continued with GERALD D.W. NORTH LAWYER, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE
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