Sean Royall

Sean Royall serves as the King & Spalding LLP’s Global Practice Head for Antitrust and Consumer Protection. He has spent his entire career handling complex litigation matters and government investigations and is among the country’s most experienced and highly regarded antitrust lawyers. He focuses broadly on antitrust and consumer protection litigation, government investigations, and counseling, and is a highly experienced courtroom litigator with a stellar track record for winning high-stakes cases. Sean is equally effective navigating complex government investigations and advising clients on the details of a wide range of strategic antitrust and consumer protection issues.

Sean previously served at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as the Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. His antitrust career, both in government and private practice, has included work on many major mergers and acquisitions, as well as lead roles in complex litigation matters that often intersect with other areas of law, including patent law, various federal regulatory regimes, consumer protection, and privacy. Sean has deep experience representing clients across a range of industries, including biopharma, healthcare, e-commerce, telecom, financial services, energy, transportation, software, and semiconductors. In addition to his work on U.S. antitrust and consumer protection matters, Sean has worked and advised on many similar cases and investigations in Europe and other parts of the world.

While in government, Sean was the lead trial lawyer in the FTC’s landmark monopolization suit against computer chip maker Rambus Inc., a novel case that established new legal standards applicable to patent disclosure within industry standard-setting consortiums. More recently, Sean played an important role on the trial team for AT&T in the company’s victory over the Department of Justice’s antitrust challenge to AT&T’s US$85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. In addition to his trial experience, Sean has successfully argued appeals in courts around the country.

Sean also has a nationally prominent reputation for his work in the consumer protection area, where he has particularly deep experience handling FTC investigations and associated litigation focused on advertising, marketing, privacy, and data security issues. In 2018-19, for example, Sean served as lead counsel for Facebook in connection with the FTC’s extensive privacy-related investigation and subsequent settlement. He brings to this area of his practice deep knowledge of applicable law and agency practice, as well as the skills of an accomplished litigator.

For well more than a decade, Sean has been given a Band 1 ranking by Chambers USA (2007-2023), which has described him as “top of the field,” “a star in the antitrust world both in counseling and litigation,” and an “extremely talented lawyer and exceptional litigator.”

Sean’s other recognitions include being ranked in Chambers Global for Antitrust – USA (2020-2023); endorsed as “Highly Recommended (Texas)” by Global Competition Review (2022); named a “Litigation Star” for Intellectual Property, Competition/Antitrust, Appellate, and Commercial work by Benchmark Litigation (2023). He is named in Who’s Who Legal in Competition (2021);  The Best Lawyers in America as “Antitrust Lawyer of the Year” (2015, 2018); and The Best Lawyers in America as “Litigation: Antitrust Lawyer of the Year” (2019). He has also been named to the “All-Star List” by BTI Services (2017) and deemed a “National Antitrust MVP” by Law360 (2015); a “Mergers and Acquisitions and Antitrust Trailblazer” by National Law Journal (2015); and a “Life Sciences Star” in Antitrust (2022) and Competition and Antitrust (2018–2019) by LMG Life Sciences. Sean was also named one of Lawdragon’s “500 Leading Litigators in America” in 2022.

Publications

Sean has written extensively on a wide range of topics relevant to, among other things, antitrust law and policy, consumer protection, privacy, FTC process and remedies, class action antitrust litigation, pharmaceutical antitrust, and standard setting. Sean previously served as Editorial Chair of the ABA’s Antitrust Law Journal, and as an editor of the ABA’s Antitrust magazine and of the Von Kalinowski treatise on Antitrust Laws and Trade Regulation.

• Author, “A Google Breakup Would Serve Progressive Aims and Punish Business,” Bloomberg Law, October 5, 2023.
• Author, “The FTC’s Punctuated Equilibrium,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, September 2023.
• Author, “The FTC’s COPPA Conundrum: Ambiguities in the Rule and a Dearth of Authoritative Guidance Leave the Agency Vulnerable to Legal Challenges” ABA Antitrust Magazine, September 9, 2022.
• Author, “Antitrust and Consumer Protection at Last Converge,” Corporate Counsel, April 27, 2022.
• Quoted in, “CFPB May Fill Enforcement Gap After FTC’s High Court Loss,” Law360, May 6, 2021.
• Quoted in, “By the Numbers: 5 Practices That Could Drive Big Law in 2021,” Bloomberg Law, December 23, 2020.
• Quoted in, “‘Hipster Antitrust’ Comes for Joe Biden,” New York Times, November 13, 2020.
• “A Watershed Moment? What Comes Next for the FTC in the Wake of AMG,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, August 9, 2020.
• “The Intersection of Antitrust and the False Claims Act,” Headnotes, Dallas Bar Association, June 2020.
• “Unpacking the New FTC/DOJ Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines,” WLF Legal Pulse, March 9, 2020.
• “Seventh Circuit Sets Up Potential Supreme Court Review of FTC Monetary Relief Authority,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, December 12, 2019.
• “Next Stop, Supreme Court? Seventh Circuit Goes Its Own Way on FTC’s Authority to Obtain Monetary Relief,” WLF Legal Pulse, September 3, 2019.
• “Taking Stock of FTC Cybersecurity Enforcement After the Equifax Settlement,” WLF Legal Pulse, August 7, 2019.
• “Ninth Circuit Judges Call for En Banc Review of FTC’s Authority to Obtain Monetary Relief,” WLF Legal Pulse, January 15, 2019.
• Co-author, “Lessons from FTC’s Loss in, and Subsequent Abandonment of, DirecTV Advertising Case,” WLF Legal Pulse, October 23, 2018.
• Co-author, “Are Disgorgement’s Days Numbered? Kokesh v. SEC May Foreshadow Curtailment of the FTC’s Authority to Obtain Monetary Relief,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Spring 2018.
• “Will Kokesh v. FTC Put a Kink in the Federal Trade Commission’s Disgorgement Hose?” WLF Legal Pulse, July 10, 2017.
• “Antitrust Scrutiny of Pharmaceutical Product Hopping,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Fall 2013.
• “When Mergers Become a Private Matter: An Updated Antitrust Primer,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Spring 2012.
• “Evaluating Mergers Between Potential Competitors Under the New Horizontal Merger Guidelines,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Fall 2010.
• “The Complexities of Litigating Generic Drug Exclusion Claims in the Antitrust Class Action Context,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Spring 2010.
• “Change?: Merger Enforcement in the New Administration,” The Advocate, Summer 2009.
• “Deterring ‘Patent Ambush’ in Standard Setting: Lessons from Rambus and Qualcomm,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Summer 2009.
• “The FTC’s N-Data Consent Order: A Missed Opportunity to Clarify Antitrust in Standard Setting,” ABA Antitrust Magazine, Summer 2008.
• “Avoiding the Scarlet ‘S’: The Modern Challenges of Document Preservation and Destruction,” The American Lawyer, June 2005.
• “The Art of Destruction,” The American Lawyer, September 2004.
• “Standard Setting and Exclusionary Conduct: The Role of Antitrust in Policing Unilateral Abuses of a Standard-Setting Process,” Antitrust, 2004.
• “Administrative Litigation at the FTC: Past, Present, and Future,” Antitrust Law Journal, 2003.
• “Noerr Immunity for Sponsoring Litigation: From Burlington Northern to Baltimore Scrap,” Antitrust, 2001.
• “Coping with the Antitrust Risks of Technological Integration,” Antitrust Law Journal, 2000.
• “Disaggregation of Antitrust Damages,” Antitrust Law Journal, 1997.
• “Post-Chicago Economics,” Antitrust Law Journal, 1995.