Charles T. (Chris) Compton is a partner in the Palo Alto, Cal., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He plays a leadership role in the firm’s antitrust practice, focusing on merger regulatory and intellectual property issues. Since joining the firm in 1980, Mr. Compton has overseen the antitrust regulatory work in more than 900 mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures—many of which involved formal investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the European Commission, and other international competition agencies. The firm’s record of success, including Hewlett Packard’s $18.7 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002, has been unparalleled: No Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati transaction since 1980 has ever been blocked or abandoned due to an antitrust challenge by a U.S. or foreign competition agency. Early in his career, Mr. Compton served as a litigator on the watershed IBM antitrust cases in the late 1970s at O’Melveny & Myers.

In addition to a wide range of intellectual property litigation, including Lotus v. Borland, Mr. Compton has handled antitrust suits involving alleged price discrimination, refusals to deal, distributor terminations, group boycotts, monopolies, state law Cartwright Act claims, grand jury investigations, and price-fixing. He wrote the firm’s Antitrust & Trade Regulation Primer for attorneys and clients, and regularly counsels many of its private and public clients on antitrust and intellectual property issues arising in the course of marketing, distribution, pricing, and standard-setting activities.

Named a Northern California “Super Lawyer” in 2004-2006 by Law & Politics magazine, Mr. Compton also was cited in the 2005 edition of Chambers USA: America’s Top Business Lawyers for his ability to “establish an immediate rapport, trust, and confidence, in a nonadversarial way.” He also was listed as one of the “Top-Ranking Competition Lawyers in Europe and Northern America” in the Practical Law Company’s Global Competition Handbook (2004-2005), earning a “highly recommended” listing in the Handbook, as well as in Practical Law Company’s Global Counsel 3000 (2003-2004). Additionally, Mr. Compton is listed in the 2006 edition of Best Lawyers in America and Legal Media Group’s 2004 Expert Guide in the “Competition and Antitrust” category.

Mr. Compton has written extensively over the years for publications such as the Antitrust Law Journal, the Antitrust Report, Corporate Counsel Outlook, and the International Business Lawyer. He teaches an antitrust/intellectual property course for the Santa Clara University School of Law LL.M. program, and has lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. He is a regular speaker at American Bar Association and International Bar Association events, as well as other conferences in the United States and Europe. He also served in the Air Force JAG Corps as a military judge.

In 1965, Mr. Compton earned his B.S. with honors from the U.S. Air Force Academy. He earned his J.D. in 1968 from New York University School of Law, where he was a Tilden-Root Scholar and managing editor of the New York University Law Review. He is admitted to practice in California and the District of Columbia, as well as before several U.S. District Courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Court of Military Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.