Thompson Hine LLP is pleased to announce that Thomas F. Zych, who leads the firm’s Antitrust, Competition & Distribution and Emerging Technologies practices, and is co-chair of its Privacy & Cybersecurity team, has been selected to chair the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Law Section. Zych will chair the section through August 2023.
As the nation’s largest organization of antitrust lawyers, the ABA Antitrust Law Section is the world’s leading community of competition, consumer protection and data privacy professionals. Its members include attorneys and non-lawyers from private law firms, in-house counsel, nonprofits, consulting firms, federal and state government agencies, as well as judges, professors and law students. For 30 years, the Antitrust Law Section has provided input to enforcement agencies around the world conducting consultations on topics within the Section’s scope of expertise.
“I am humbled to serve as Antitrust Section Chair and am proud to lead a group of such dedicated antitrust, data privacy and consumer protection professionals,” said Zych. “I am thrilled to be leading the Section during such an exciting time for antitrust law. With the enforcement agencies’ aggressively competitive policy goals, the expansion globally of data privacy and security regulation, and the demand for vigorous antitrust action, we expect that this will be a busy year working with regulators and agencies and providing technical advice.”
Based in Cleveland, Zych has over 39 years of experience in a wide range of data protection, intellectual property, consumer protection, social media, competition and antitrust matters. He also represents a full range of business enterprises in their privacy and data security operations.
His privacy and data security practice includes strategic counseling on compliance with domestic and international privacy and data protection laws and regulations, data incident prevention and response, designing and implementing information management programs, advice on electronic marketing and product distribution, and government investigations and actions. His technology practice focuses on providing strategic counseling to both mature and early-stage technology ventures, including online and in-store retaining and distribution, biotechnology and bioinformatics ventures, and established businesses adopting electronic and technologically advanced means of competition.
He also has considerable experience in trade secret litigation and counseling; patent, trademark and copyright litigation; intellectual property transactions including joint ventures, development agreements and licensing transactions; corporate internal investigations; merger and acquisition counseling; antitrust criminal investigations; antitrust civil litigation; and social media marketing and advertising, promotional content, consumer testimonials, compliance with FTC standards, promotion of experimental therapies in light of advertising and privacy laws, social media service agreements and moderating employee activity on social media sites.
Throughout his career, Zych has held several leadership positions within the antitrust community both nationally and within the Cleveland community. His prior leadership positions with the Antitrust Section include Section Chair-Elect; Long Range and Strategic Planning Committee Chair and Council Representative for Cartel and Criminal Practice and Federal Civil Enforcement Committees; Finance Officer, Consumer Protection Officer Founding Chair, Privacy and Information Security Committee; Past Chair, Committee Operations Task Force; Member, Consumer Protection, Privacy and Information Security and Advertising Disputes and Litigation Committee. He has served as the Chair of the Defense Research Institute’s Cyber Litigation Committee and a member of the U.S. Secret Service Cleveland Field Office Information Technology Task Force, and has served on the Council of the Ohio State Bar Association’s Antitrust Section.
Other Thompson Hine lawyers have leadership roles in the Antitrust Section, including Mark R. Butscha, Jr., Counsel to the Section Chair and Associate Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal; Joshua Shapiro, Vice Chair of the Section’s U.S. Comments and Policy Committee, and Caitlin R. Thomas, Section Young Lawyer Representative.