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Areas of Practice
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Representative Experience
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Professional/Civic Activities
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Court Admissions
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Bar Admissions
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Education
Areas of Practice
Mr. McDonald's practice emphasizes technology-related intellectual property litigation, including strategic litigation arising from contract-based disputes. He also regularly advises on matters of constitutional and statutory law relating to political parties.
Much of Mr. McDonald's practice has focused on software-related disputes. He has represented Microsoft Corporation in significant litigation since 1986.
Mr. McDonald also holds four patents. He is the sole inventor of a system and method for efficiently processing messages stored in multiple message stores, and a co-inventor of two systems and methods for efficiently evaluating a structured message store for message redundancy and a co-inventor of a system and method for identifying and categorizing messages extracted from archived message stores.
Representative Experience
David has led legal teams in several significant public matters, including:
- Managing the Washington State Democratic Party’s successful post–election day defense of the election of Governor Christine Gregoire in one of the closest statewide elections in U.S. history. David first served as the Manual Recount Director, coordinating and directing all Democratic efforts related to the first manual recount ever of a statewide election in Washington state history — and the first statewide recount ever to change an election result — including four lawsuits, two of which resulted in unanimous decisions of the Washington State Supreme Court. After Governor Gregoire was finally certified as the winner by a margin of 129 votes out of 2.8 million, David served as the Democratic Party’s Contest Manager, directing the successful defense of the election during a six–month election contest, including a two week trial that led to a court decision increasing Governor Gregoire’s margin of victory to 133.
- Serving as lead counsel for the Washington State Democratic Party in its seven year-long successful defense of its constitutional right to determine its nominees and candidates. David first led a four-year-long battle to have Washington's 70-year old blanket primary declared unconstitutional (Democratic Party of Washington State v. Reed, 343 F.3d 1198 (9th Cir. 2003), certiorari denied sub nom Reed v. Democratic Party, 124 S.Ct. 1412 (2004); Washington State Grange v. Washington State Democratic Party , 124 S.Ct. 1663 (2004)), and is leading the Democratic Party's collaboration with the Republican Party to challenge to the constitutionality of the "top two" primary election system that was adopted to replace the blanket primary (Washington State Republican Party, et al., v. Logan et al. (377 F. Supp. 2d 907) (W.D. Wash 2005), aff'd 460 F.3d 1108 (9th Cir. 2006); rev’d 128 S.Ct. 1184 (2008).
- Serving as lead counsel for Microsoft Corporation in its successful seven–year–long battle with Apple Computer concerning Microsoft's right to develop and distribute the Windows graphic user interface. This case sharply limited the applicability of “look and feel“ concepts in copyright infringement disputes involving software. Microsoft won the case on summary judgment by the trial court and successfully defended that judgment through appeals. The case is reported at Apple Computer Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett Packard Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994), certiorari denied 115 S.Ct. 1176 (1995).
- Serving as lead counsel for Microsoft in Sun v. Microsoft (N.D. Cal. 1997–2001)(Java).
- Serving as lead counsel for Microsoft Corporation in its first major litigation in 1986, defending Microsoft against claims by Seattle Computer Products (SCP). Seattle Computer Products claimed to have a fully–paid up, royalty free license to the source and object code of all versions of the company's then flagship product, MS–DOS. Microsoft obtained a pre–trial summary judgment limiting Seattle Computer Products rights, if any, to distribution with machines made by SCP as those machines existed in 1981. The case settled thereafter while SCP was seeking a jury verdict that whatever rights it had extended to current versions of MS–DOS and that any appeal it might have from the summary judgment was not, as a practical matter, moot.
- Serving as lead counsel representing a structural engineer sued by a building owner and general contractor in 1981 because the building he designed was vacated by the county on the basis of seismic deficiencies and less structural steel than the building code required. After a four–week trial the jury returned a verdict in the engineer's favor and the trial court ordered the contractor and owner to pay the engineer's attorneys' fees and costs.
Recent Experience
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U.S. Ethernet Innovations, LLC v. Acer, Inc., Acer America, Inc., Gateway, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., et al., (E.D. Tex., 6:09-cv-00448)(network adapters, interfaces and data transmission)
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Mortgage Grader Inc. v. Zillow Inc., et al. (E.D. Tex., 2:09-cv-00319)(credit/financing process)
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Clear With Computers, LLC v. Carrier Corporation, Otis Elevator Co., Pratt & Whitney Power Systems, Inc., Pratt & Whitney RocketDyne, Inc., Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., United Technologies Corp., UTC Fire & Security Corporation; UTC Power Corp., Bergdorf Goodman, Inc. et al (E.D. Tex., 6:09-cv-00481) (web catalogs)
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Gillani Consulting, Inc. v. Ferguson Enterprises, Inc., (N.D. Tex., 3:07-cv-1488-O) (software copyright infringement)
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Gillani Consulting, Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., (W. D. Wa., C09-0351-TSZ) (software copyright infringement)
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Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell Technology Group, Ltd. And Marvell Semiconductor, Inc., (W.D. Pa., 2:09-cv-00290)(Correlation-Sensitive Adaptive Sequence Detection)
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Clear With Computers, LLC v. Carrier Corporation, Otis Elevator Co., Pratt & Whitney Power Systems, Inc., Pratt & Whitney Rocket Dyne, Inc., Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., United Technologies Corp., UTC Fire & Security Corporation; UTC Power Corp., Bassett Furniture Industries, Inc. et al (E.D. Tex., 6:09-cv-00095) (web catalogs)
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Information Protection and Authentication of Texas v. Microsoft Corporation, McAfee, Inc., Velocity Micro, Inc. et al, (E.D. Tex., 2:08-cv-00484)(Program Authorization Information Data Structures)
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Global Innovations Technology Holdings, LLC and Information Protection and Authentication of Texas v. Acer America Corp., Alienware, Corp., American Future Technology Corp., Dell Inc., Fujitsu Computer Systems Corp., Gateway, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Motion Computing, Inc. et. al, (S.D. Fla. 1:09-cv-20217)( Program Authorization Information Data Structures) and Global Innovation Technology Holdings, LLC, et al. v. Acer America Corp., Alienware, Corp., American Future Technology Corp., Dell Inc., Fujitsu Computer Systems Corp., Gateway, Inc., Motion Computing, Inc., Panasonic Corporation of North America, et al., (E.D. Tex., 2:09-cv-198)
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MAZ Technologies, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, (E.D. Tex., 6:08-cv-00289) (Transparent Encryption and Decryption for an Electronic Document Management System)
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Neurografix and Washington Research Foundation v. Oak Tree Medical Corporation, et al., (C.D. Cal., CV08-02923)(Image Neurography and Diffusion Anistropy Imaging)
Professional/Civic Activities
- Member, American Bar Association
- Member, American Trial Lawyers Association
- Member, Washington State Trial Lawyers Association
- Member, Board of Trustees, Harborview Medical Center (Chair Health Care and Strategic Planning Committee, 2003-present; President, 2001-2002)
- Member, Democratic National Committee, 1992-present (Member, Rules and ByLaws Committee 2001-present)
Court Admissions
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- U.S. Supreme Court
Bar Admissions
Education
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J.D.,
Harvard Law School
(1973)
(cum laude)
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B.S.,
Stanford University
(1970)
(with distinction and departmental honors, Mathematics, Phi Beta Kappa)
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