David is a partner at Cravath. He is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost leaders in the field of intellectual property, including intellectual property management and strategy, the development of global intellectual property norms, laws and practices as well as commercialization and enforcement of innovation-based assets. David supports the firm’s clients with a wide range of their most complex intellectual property issues. From August 2009 to January 2013, David served as Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In that role, he advised the President, Secretary of Commerce and the Administration on intellectual property policy matters. As Director of the USPTO, he was instrumental in achieving the greatest legislative reform of the U.S. patent system in generations through passage and implementation of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act signed into law by the President in September 2011. Prior to leading the USPTO, David held several executive posts in the legal department of IBM, the world’s largest patent holder. From 2003 to 2009, he served as the company’s Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for Intellectual Property. David received a B.S. summa cum laude in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1983 and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.