Anthony C. Epstein

Partner

1330 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20036
TEL: 202.429.8065
FAX: 202. 261.7507

Anthony C. Epstein is a partner in the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where he is a member of the Regulatory & Industry Affairs, Litigation, and International Departments and the Intellectual Property group.

Antitrust
Mr. Epstein has represented clients in a wide range of antitrust matters in both litigation and counseling contexts. He has extensive experience in handling merger reviews by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as state antitrust enforcement agencies. He served as MCI's antitrust counsel in its 2006 merger with Verizon and in its prior mergers with Sprint, WorldCom, and British Telecommunications. He is familiar with the issues raised by multi-jurisdictional merger investigations involving the European Commission, national competition authorities, and federal and state regulatory commissions.

Mr. Epstein has represented clients outside the merger context in civil and criminal cases and investigations by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and State Attorneys General. He has handled a number of private antitrust cases, representing both plaintiffs and defendants. His litigation and counseling matters have run the antitrust gamut from price fixing to monopolization to tying to vertical distribution arrangements to price discrimination to patent pooling and licensing to trade association activities.

Telecommunications
Mr. Epstein's telecommunications practice includes both competition matters and matters before the Federal Communications Commission and state regulatory agencies. He has extensive experience in FCC and state proceedings concerning telecommunications mergers and joint ventures, including Verizon-MCI, WorldCom-Sprint, WorldCom-MCI, MCI-BT, Bell Atlantic-GTE, Bell Atlantic-NYNEX, SBC-Ameritech, AT&T-MediaOne, and AT&T-TCI. Mr. Epstein has advised clients with respect to a variety of legal and policy issues concerning Internet services.

Mr. Epstein has represented clients in a range of FCC proceedings relating to interconnection, unbundled network elements, reasonableness of rates, pole attachments, and participation of foreign carriers in the US market. Among the telecommunications cases that Mr. Epstein has argued in federal appellate courts are Qwest Communications Int'l v. FCC, 229 F.3d 1172 (D.C. Cir. 2000), Gulf Power Co. v. FCC, 208 F.3d 1263 (11th Cir. 2000), Gulf Power Co. v. United States, 187 F.3d 1324 (11th Cir. 1999), Bell Atlantic Telephone Cos. v. FCC, 131 F.3d 1044 (D.C. Cir. 1997), United States v. Western Electric Co., 12 F.3d 225 (D.C. Cir. 1993), and MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. FCC, 917 F.2d 30 (D.C. Cir. 1990).

International Trade
Mr. Epstein has represented clients in connection with proceedings before the International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, and in appeals from these agencies to the US Court of International Trade and binational dispute settlement panels established under NAFTA. He has been involved in several WTO cases, before both panels and the Appellate Body. Mr. Epstein was part of the Steptoe team that acted as lead counsel to the Canadian industry in the countervailing duty case against imports of softwood lumber from Canada, the most commercially significant trade cases ever filed under the US trade laws.

Background
Mr. Epstein maintains a general litigation practice at the trial and appellate levels, representing plaintiff and defendant corporations, small businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals. He has handled a variety of pro bono matters, ranging from military commissions for detainees at Guantanamo Bay to free speech on college campuses.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Epstein served in the U.S. Department of Justice - in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, in the Antitrust Division, and in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Mr. Epstein is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland, as well as numerous federal courts.

Mr. Epstein is active in various professional activities. He is the Chair of the Committee on Unauthorized Practice of Law of the DC Court of Appeals. He was Vice Chair of the DC Bar's Rules of Professional Responsibility Review Committee, which developed a comprehensive overhaul of the DC legal ethics rules recently adopted by the DC Court of Appeals.

Noteworthy

Listed in Washington, DC, Super Lawyers 2007 for Antitrust Litigation

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