A Conversation With Donald R. Dunner
(Appeared in Washington Lawyer, November 2009)

In 50-plus years in the legal profession, attorney Donald R. Dunner has come to be regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on patents. Dunner, a partner at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP—the world’s largest intellectual property law firm—has worked in every aspect of patent law and argued more cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) than any other litigator in the country. Dunner also was involved in the early years of the Federal Circuit, having served as chair of the Advisory Committee to the court during its first 10 years and participated in drafting the court’s rules.

Over the course of his career, Dunner also has been involved in numerous legal associations such as the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, American Bar Association (ABA), American Patent Law Association (which later became the American Intellectual Property Law Association), Bar Association of the District of Columbia, District of Columbia Bar, and National Council of Patent Law Associations. He has coauthored several books and teaches a course on federal circuit practice at The George Washington University Law School.

D.C. Bar staff writer Kathryn Alfisi talked with Dunner about his childhood, including his love of the Brooklyn Dodgers, his journey into patent law, and the relevance of the Federal Circuit.

Tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Brooklyn, New York; I spent the first 17 years of my life there.

I lived with my mother and sister, and we did not have a ton of money. We had no cars, and the only thing I knew about the geography of Brooklyn was where the subway and elevated trains stopped in the New York City transit system. I only knew that if you took a train, you would end up in Coney Island or at some other location in the city. I managed to be born at a perfect time, 1931, which meant I was too young for the second World War, and I was in college during the Korean War. I went into the Army about five days after the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed.

I have many memories of my childhood in Brooklyn. Since my parents were divorced, we did not take many vacations, but I did manage summer stays at the Atlantic seashore with paternal grandparents and in the upstate New York mountains with an aunt’s family. Beyond that, it was attending school, playing stickball or other games in the Brooklyn streets, and occasionally getting into softball or football games on the school playground. Since I was not a very good athlete, it was often necessary for me to bring the softball or football to assure my participation.

Coming from Brooklyn as I did, there was much interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers as they were then called. Visits to Ebbets Field were a big treat, and I spent much time reading the morning paper and boning up on the latest Dodger statistics. Indeed, I have vivid memories of various events (mostly negative) in Dodgers history, such as when Mickey Owen, the Dodgers catcher, dropped a third strike that would have favorably ended a World Series game for the Dodgers. But the game ultimately was won by the then hated New York Yankees—although I have since mellowed in my attitude toward the Yankees now that the Dodgers have fled to Los Angeles. I also will never forget Bobby Thomson’s home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers that won the pennant for the New York Giants.

Since my parents were divorced and my mother worked full time, I spent considerable time with my older sister, who not only acted as a surrogate mother when my mother was not around, but who used me as an effective decoy when she wanted to sneak off with her favorite boyfriend, whom she ultimately married.

I was a child during World War II. Though I do not have many detailed recollections about the war years, I can remember exactly where I was when we declared war on Germany, and I can well recall that we had a victory garden. It was a custom at that time to grow a garden to supplement your family’s food supply. The garden was in our tiny, postage-sized backyard, and my entire crop consisted of four radishes. Today, I have a tiny, 33-plus acre farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where I grow corn and soybeans. I thoroughly enjoy watching the corn and soybeans grow even though I do not make very much money on it. However, it brings back fond memories of the four radishes.

My most vivid recollection of the war years was knowing where I was and the time of day when I received news of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president I knew of during my entire childhood. His death came as a complete shock to me, as it did to others in Brooklyn and the rest of the country.

What about your schooling?
I went to public schools all the way up through junior high school. When I was ready to go to high school, I took an examination to get into a specialty school, Stuyvesant High School, which was science-orientated and one of the best high schools in New York City, with no geographical limits on students who were admitted. Stuyvesant is still a very well-known school, which includes among its alumni [U.S. Attorney General] Eric H. Holder Jr. (Class of ’69), [Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama] David Axelrod (Class of ’73), several Nobel Prize winners, and other nationally renown figures such as Bob Weinberg, former partner at Williams & Connolly LLP, who was first in our class of more than 600. I saw a recent alumni magazine with a photo of a young Eric Holder and a young David Axelrod, which I found rather amusing. Holder looked exactly like he looks now but younger, and Axelrod had long hair all the way down to his shoulders, very different from what he looks like now.

Stuyvesant at the time had about 5,000 or 6,000 students in a single brick building, much like Georgetown University Law Center, which I attended in the mid- to late 1950s. As a result, Stuyvesant students went there in shifts: first- and second-year students attended in the afternoon, and third- and fourth-year students attended in the morning. To make money, I worked afternoons as a “runner” on Wall Street during my third and fourth years. During that same period, I ended up editing the Stuyvesant yearbook.

Attending Stuyvesant ultimately led me to Purdue University, where I majored in chemical engineering. Purdue was a very good time in my life. I joined a fraternity early on and eventually became president of it. I was also very active in student government. I ran for freshman class president; I did not get elected, but I persevered and was successful in my run for sophomore class president. I also ran successfully for student body president. These ventures into student government gave me considerable practice and experience in public speaking, which, in turn, led to my interest in the legal profession.

Though I studied engineering and spent a few months after graduation as an engineer-in-training with The Inland Steel Company in Chicago, I knew pretty quickly that I did not want to do that as a career. The work I had done in student government convinced me that law would suit my talents and interests, and since I had an engineering background, patent law became the logical choice for me. Before I went to law school, though, I spent two years in the Army where I was stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey and helped orient new trainees coming into camp.

As soon as I got out of the Army, I applied to Georgetown because I knew I wanted to be in Washington, D.C., and work in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. I, accordingly, attended Georgetown at night and worked as an examiner at the Patent Office during the day. After working in the Patent Office for one year, I heard that there was a clerkship open at the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (which later merged with the U.S. Court of Claims and became the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit), and I applied for the opening. Noble Johnson, who was the chief judge [of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals] at the time, was a former Indiana congressman, and I think he liked the fact that I went to Purdue, which is located in West Lafayette, Indiana. Like other judges of the court at that time, Judge Johnson hired law students as clerks, and I spent my last two years of law school clerking at the court. Since the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals handled all appeals from the Patent Office, I received a very liberal education and assisted in drafting opinions for the judge. The court clerkship, supplemented by the superb training I had received at the Patent Office, was probably as instrumental as any other experience I had up to that time in shaping my career. It also led me to some very good job opportunities.

What kind of relationship did you have with Judge Johnson?
By the time Judge Johnson had become chief judge, he had reached the point where he relied very heavily on his law clerks, though he obviously had the ultimate decision-making power. Since the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals judges sat en banc as a five-judge court, Judge John