David McPhie is a litigation associate in the Newport Beach office of Irell & Manella LLP. Since joining Irell & Manella, Mr. McPhie has represented clients in a number of matters involving technologies as diverse as semiconductor fabrication, network routing, consumer electronics, and biomedical devices.

From 2003 to 2004, Mr. McPhie served as a law clerk to the Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (now Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court).

Mr. McPhie earned his J.D. magna cum laude in 2003 from Harvard Law School, where he graduated in the top ten percent of his class and served as an editor on the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. While in law school, Mr. McPhie received awards for his extensive writing on constitutional, patent, and copyright law issues, including: Stanford Technology Law Review Paper Contest (first place); BBCLE.com IP Student Writing Competition (first place); FDLI H. Thomas Austern Writing Competition (second place, short paper); Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Journal Comment Contest (third place); ASCAP Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition (second place, HLS & national); First-year Ames Moot Court Competition (best brief).

Mr. McPhie's legal publications include: "Almost Private: Pen Registers, Packet Sniffers, and Privacy at the Margin," 2005 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2005); "Access Made Accessible: Shaping the Laws and Technologies that Protect Creative Works," 51 J. Copyright Soc'y U.S.A. 521 (2004); "Old Drugs, New Uses: Solving a Hatch-Waxman Patent Predicament," 59 Food & Drug L.J. 155 (2004); Book Note, 15 Harv. J. Law & Tech. 539 (2002) (reviewing Stuart Biegel, "Beyond Our Control? Confronting the Limits of Our Legal System in the Age of Cyberspace" (2001)).

Mr. McPhie received his bachelor's degree magna cum laude in Physics from Harvard College, where his coursework included classical and quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, wave theory, chemistry, electrical engineering, and computer science. Prior to starting law school, Mr. McPhie co-authored the book Perl How to Program with Deitel & Associates, a best-selling publisher of computer programming textbooks. Mr. McPhie also worked at the Electron Vision Group of AlliedSignal, where he did research on electron beam applications for semiconductor photoresist curing.

Bar & Court Admissions

• 2004, California
• U.S. District Court, Central, Northern and Southern Districts of California
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
• United States Patent and Trademark Office