In Conversation with Gary Reback and Michael Arrington
Tuesday, June 30th 2009
6:00pm Registration and Networking
7:00 Program
8:30 Adjourn
Venue: Computer History Museum
Cost: No fee.
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Join HBSTech and the Computer History Museum community, Tuesday, June 30th at the Computer History Museum.
Register Online
Date: Tuesday, June 30th 2009
Location: Computer History Museum.
1401 North Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043
Join Gary Reback, author of the new book Free the Market! in conversation with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch to discuss how the Obama Administration’s antitrust enforcement policies will affect Silicon Valley’s economy.
Drawing on vivid, behind-the-scenes accounts of leading high tech lawsuits – involving top companies like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and AT&T – Reback’s new book paints a tableau of government policy gone awry. "You can read his account as eyewitness history, a memoir of legal warfare," wrote Scott Herhold in the San Jose Mercury News. "Free the Market! is a white paper meant to influence a new government in Washington D.C."
Reback and Arrington will examine President Obama’s commitment to innovation along with his promise of renewed antitrust enforcement to make predictions about how the new administration will answer important questions.
- Should antitrust enforcers stop worrying about Microsoft?
- When will the Justice Department sue Google?
- Is industry consolidation good for the Valley? Is it legal?
- Will the government challenge the assertions of patents by giant patent
pools?
- What does antitrust say about companies that are "too big to fail"?
Gary Reback
Gary Reback is best known for spearheading the efforts that led to the federal lawsuit against Microsoft in the late 1990s. He has recently published a well received book, "Free the Market!: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive."
Reback specializes in antitrust and intellectual property litigation and counseling, and over the years, has been named to the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America" list by the National Law Journal, the "Elite 100" by Upside magazine, the "Top 100" by MicroTimes, and "Lawyers of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine. He has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wired magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle and BusinessWeek, among other publications.
Reback worked his way through Yale University programming computers for the school’s economics department. After graduating magna cum laude in 1971, Reback attended law school at Stanford University where he studied antitrust under Professor William F. Baxter and served as an editor of the law review. He clerked for a federal appellate judge in Atlanta, Georgia and worked for several years at a large law firm in Washington, D.C. and finally setlling in Northern California in 1981, just as Silicon Valley was beginning to blossom. He currently works at Carr & Ferrell law firm.
California Law Business called Reback "the leading proponent of [Silicon] Valley’s emerging technologies in the courts." The National Law Journal has referred to Reback as the "antitrust champion" and the "protector of the marketplace." "If there’s one person who’s going to help define antitrust law for the 21st Century," wrote Wired magazine, "it’s Gary Reback."
Read about Reback's book at Amazon
Michael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. In May 2008 Time Magazine named Michael Arrington as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1993), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He also co-authored a book on initial public offerings.
In 1999 he left WSGR to join RealNames as VP Business Development and General Counsel. In 2000 he cofounded Achex, an online payments company. Achex was acquired by First Data Corp in 2001 for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online.
Arrington worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including Verisign.
He founded TechCrunch on June 11, 2005.
