David T. McDonald

I'll research this attorney before drafting.

David T. McDonald — K&L Gates LLP (Seattle) — Note: my verification was cut short, so a few points below are flagged as unconfirmed.

Focus areas. The tracked case list is thin — a single matter — so it does not establish a technology pattern on its own. That matter, Walker Digital, LLC v. Microsoft Corp. et al., sits in the e-commerce/software space: Walker Digital's asserted patent family (e.g., U.S. Patent No. 6,349,295) covers initiating background network searches from within an application program. Public directory profiles describe McDonald's practice more broadly as intellectual property and patent litigation plus commercial/business litigation, and one Martindale listing identifies him as K&L Gates' Intellectual Property practice area leader in Seattle. I found no sourcing tying him to Wi-Fi/standard-essential patent campaigns, life sciences, or mechanical art, so I would not attribute those specialties to him.

Side preference. Based on the authoritative counts, his only tracked appearance is on the defense side (0 plaintiff, 1 defendant), where he is recorded as lead counsel. That is a single data point, not a demonstrated preference for defending operating companies; treat it as defense-leaning but statistically uninformative. Note also that K&L Gates as a firm does assert patents for some non-practicing-entity clients, so firm-level plaintiff work should not be imputed to him.

Firm context and notable matters. He is with K&L Gates in Seattle; directory listings also associate him with predecessor firm Preston Gates & Ellis, which combined with Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in 2007 to form K&L Gates. In the Walker Digital litigation, the publicly documented result in the related Central District of California action (Case No. 09-cv-7514, Microsoft/Dell/HP) was a summary judgment of non-infringement on claim construction, entering final judgment for defendants on May 6, 2011 and affirmed by the Federal Circuit on May 24, 2012 (484 F. App'x 496). Caution: the docket excerpts I located for that C.D. Cal. case name Munger, Tolles & Olson (and Microsoft in-house counsel) for the defendants, not McDonald or K&L Gates, so I cannot confirm he was counsel of record in that particular action — his tracked appearance may relate to one of the separate Walker Digital v. Microsoft suits filed in Delaware in 2011. I could not verify a specific outcome attributable to him.

PTAB/IPR. I found no evidence in the available sources that he appears in IPR, PGR, or other PTAB proceedings; absence of evidence here should not be read as confirmation that he has none, given the abbreviated search.

Bar and education. Admitted in Washington (1973); Stanford University, B.S. 1970; Harvard Law School, J.D. 1973 (per Martindale/Super Lawyers listings).