Matthew D. McGill is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and its Appellate and Constitutional Law and Intellectual Property practice groups.
Mr. McGill recently was named a national Rising Star by Law360, which identified him as one of 10 appellate lawyers under 40 to watch. Since joining the firm in 2004, he has participated in fifteen cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, drafting the winning briefs in ten of those cases. Those ten Supreme Court victories, which span a wide range of substantive areas of law, include several of the biggest come-from-behind legal victories for businesses of the last several years:
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) – Hailed by the New York Times as a “doctrinal earthquake,” this decision overruled two Supreme Court precedents and established the First Amendment right of corporations to spend general treasury funds on speech activities to influence the outcomes of elections.
Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (2009) – After persuading the Supreme Court to take up the case over the opposition of both environmentalists and the Solicitor General, Mr. McGill’s briefs convinced the Supreme Court to reverse a Ninth Circuit decision that invalidated a critical Clean Water Act permit and jeopardized mine operator Coeur Alaska’s $330,000,000 investment in an Alaskan gold mine.
Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. (2008) – This decision, which, as the New York Times reported, has had “huge implications for the health care-technology industry,” held that federal law preempts many state-law product liability claims against medical devices manufacturers, foreclosing scores of product liability cases across the country.
Microsoft Corporation v. AT&T Corp. (2007) – This case reversed a Federal Circuit decision that had vastly increased certain defendants’ damages exposure in patent infringement cases by extending U.S. patent law to reach software developers’ foreign sales. The victory, New York Times observed, has “save[d] [Microsoft] billions of dollars.”
In the intellectual property area, Mr. McGill has participated—either on behalf of a party or amici curiae—in virtually every significant copyright and patent case to come before the Supreme Court in the last several years. He currently represents the respondent in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., concerning application of the first-sale doctrine under the Copyright Act. In the patent area, he represented in Microsoft in Microsoft v. AT&T, and more recently in Microsoft v. i4i, which addressed the standard of proof for patent invalidity. And he has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of clients in important intellectual property cases such as Mayo Collective Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB, Bilski v. Kappos, KSR International v. Teleflex, and eBay v. MercExchange.
Outside the Supreme Court, Mr. McGill’s practice focuses on cases involving novel and complex questions of federal law. For example, he successfully defended The Boeing Company against charges brought by the National Labor Relations Board arising out of Boeing’s decision to open a manufacturing facility in South Carolina. He also has handled several cases raising questions under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act on behalf of holders of defaulted sovereign debt. In the intellectual property area, Mr. McGill represents Viacom in its landmark copyright infringement action against YouTube, and he advises a range of companies on legal issues in high-stakes patent infringement cases.
Mr. McGill also maintains an active pro bono practice. He currently represents the plaintiffs in Perry v. Brown, a constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex couples from marrying. Previously, he briefed and argued a case in the Supreme Court of Virginia on behalf of the adoptive family of a 4-year-old girl and won a unanimous ruling affirming the adoption. In 2008, he successfully defended Senator John McCain in cases contending that Senator McCain was not a “natural-born citizen” and therefore ineligible to be President.
Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Mr. McGill served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He clerked for the Hon. Joseph M. McLaughlin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Mr. McGill earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1996. In 2000, he graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. Mr. McGill is licensed to practice in New York and the District of Columbia and he has been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Fifth, Ninth, Eleventh, District of Columbia, and Federal Circuits, and the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.