C. GRAHAM GERST

C. Graham Gerst is a partner of Global IP Law Group, where he works on all aspects of clients’ efforts to monetize their patents, including sales, licensing, and litigation.

Immediately before joining Global IP Law Group, Graham Gerst served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, he vice-chaired the Justice Department’s Task Force on Intellectual Property and was appointed Deputy U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. He also managed a portfolio of technology-related and national-security issues for the Deputy Attorney General, including computer forensics, information sharing, biometric data collection and management, and the Department’s participation in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), the body that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. technology for national-security concerns. Finally, during his tenure, Mr. Gerst was appointed Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia and won two jury trials.

Before that experience, Mr. Gerst spent nine years in the Intellectual Property group at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he was a partner. He specialized in patent litigation, handling matters involving a wide array of technologies, from semiconductor design and manufacture, electronic circuitry, biotechnology, consumer electronics, the internet, oil and gas, automotive, kitchen appliances, and packaging. He is a member of the Trial Bar for the Northern District of Illinois and was named as an Illinois “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers magazine in 2008.

Mr. Gerst received a J.D., cum laude, from the University of Chicago law school, where he was an editor on the University of Chicago Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Mr. Gerst received his B.A., with honors and cum laude, from Williams College.

Mr. Gerst’s legal activities outside of the office include serving on the Board of Governors of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association and on its Judicial Appointments Committee. Mr. Gerst also has taught trial advocacy at the University of Chicago Law School for three years. In his non-legal capacity, he is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Foundation for Education and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. He is also a past Chair of the Metro Board of Metropolitan Family Services.