Kevin J. O’Connor

Kevin O’Connor is chair of Godfrey & Kahn’s Antitrust and Trade Regulation Practice Group and has offices in both Madison and Milwaukee. He has more than twenty years of experience in antitrust, trade regulation, and consumer litigation and counseling. Kevin has handled a number of merger matters with the federal agencies and with the other state attorney general offices. His experience complements the extensive mergers and acquisition practice for which Godfrey & Kahn is well known.

Kevin has been particularly active in product distribution and marketing issues concerning a wide array of industries. He has litigated numerous cases involving resale price maintenance, minimum advertised price arrangements and other matters raising vertical issues. These cases concerned a wide variety of industries including, for example, consumer electronics, toys, farm chemicals, cable television, computers and computer software, compact disks, and shoes. He has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in these matters.

Kevin is also well known in the healthcare industry in Wisconsin and nationally. He has successfully litigated several significant health care antitrust matters in Wisconsin and has been a national spokesperson on health care antitrust enforcement issues. Just a few examples include his successful resolution of a hospital merger case in southeastern Wisconsin, a multispecialty physician practice merger between Marshfield Clinic and Wausau Medical Center, and a non-merger conduct matter involving the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association.

Kevin has also been involved in antitrust issues and consumer issues involving a number of other industries too numerous to mention here. In cases as diverse as Microsoft and the generic drug litigation, he has successfully litigated issues concerning the interface between intellectual property rights and the antitrust laws. He has developed an acute awareness of the antitrust risks inherent in IP licensing practices and the settlement of IP litigation. This experience complements the extensive IP litigation and counseling practice at the firm.

Kevin has also authored amicus briefs such as the brief filed on behalf of 36 states in the U.S. Supreme Court in the FTC v. Ticor Title Insur. Co., case resulting in a holding that state regulators did not regulate title insurance actively enough to give the insurers immunity from the antitrust laws. His experience complements the firm’s extensive insurance litigation and regulatory practice.

Kevin has spoken and written extensively on various areas of antitrust law. He has commented extensively on merger guidelines promulgated by the federal agencies, written chapters of books and articles for various ABA section publications, and is a regular speaker at national antitrust seminars.