Richard G. Taranto - CONFIRMED

On November 10, 2011, President Obama nominated Richard Gary Taranto, born in 1957, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  Taranto is presently a named partner at the law firm of Farr & Taranto.  President Obama has said that “Richard Taranto is a lawyer of exceptional legal ability and great personal and professional integrity.  I am pleased and honored to nominate him to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Federal Circuit, and I am confident that his intelligence, independence, judgment, and temperament will make him a welcome addition to that court."

Biography

Richard Gary Taranto was born in New York, New York in 1957.  He graduated summa cum laude from Pomona College in 1977, and received his J.D. from Yale in 1981, where he was the Article & Book Review Editor for the Yale Law Journal.  After graduation, Richard Taranto clerked for three judges.  He clerked for Judge Abraham Sofaer of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1981-82.  From 1982-83, he clerked in the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for Judge Robert Bork.  Finally, in 1983-84, he was a clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Thereafter, in 1984, he joined the firm of Onek, Klein & Farr, where he was an Associate for two years until joining the Office of the Solicitor General in 1986.  He was an Assistant to the Solicitor General until 1989, whereupon he rejoined Onek, Klein & Farr as a Partner.  He became a named partner at the firm in 1991, which has been known as Farr & Taranto since 1994.

Legal Experience

Richard Taranto has extensive experience as an appellate litigator in government and in private practice.  A great deal of his litigation experience has been in the areas of intellectual property.  He has represented a diversity of clients in federal appellate IP litigation, including Honeywell, Gore & Associates, and the file-sharing company Grokster.

Although most of his work has been litigation, he also represented what is now Verizon in various merger proceedings.  While in the Solicitor General’s office, Mr. Taranto argued eight cases before the United States Supreme Court, and argued eleven more before the Supreme Court in private practice.  Indeed, in an ERISA case, he was appointed by the Supreme Court to defend the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a case where neither party chose to defend it.  He briefed the case, argued it, and eventually prevailed.

Professional and Academic Activities

Richard Taranto was admitted to the New York Bar in 1982, and to the District of Columbia Bar in 1984, and has been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, D.C., and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals.  Since 2009, he has served on the United States Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules.  According to Super Lawyers, he has been a “top 100” lawyer in Washington, D.C. for the past five years.  He has served on the Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute Outside Advisory Board since 1999, and was recognized as one of that institute’s two “Moot Court Justices of the Term” in 2003.

He taught a Supreme Court Practice seminar at Georgetown University Law Center in 1992, and again taught at Georgetown in 1995, teaching Federal Courts.  More recently, in 2002, he taught Patent Law at Harvard Law School.  He has been a member of the Mathematical Association of America since 2002, and has even served as a substitute math teacher at Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C.