David C. Johnson

Mr. Johnson, a partner in the firm’s Intellectual Property Team, focuses his practice on helping businesses manage complex brand issues. His clients have ranged from pre-launch start-ups to Fortune 100 companies across the beauty, fashion, media, food & beverage, sports, and entertainment industries. In addition to working with clients to refine their strategies for the prosecution, management, and enforcement of their intellectual property, he counsels clients with respect to the range of consumer-facing aspects of their business where they might experience operational and reputational harm, including social media and advertising, marketing, promotions, privacy, product and packaging claims review, licensing, commercial contracts (including manufacturing and distribution), and intellectual property acquisitions. 

 

Mr. Johnson advises influencers, authors, athletes, and other endorsers, as well as the brands working with those endorsers, with respect to their advertising compliance obligations, licensing, merchandising, and engagement agreements.  

 

He also brings his cross-industry and multi-disciplinary experience to counsel clients as they grow and their businesses evolve, particularly with a focus on strategically shoring up the issues important to investors, acquirers, and the continued expansion of the brands. 

In his consumer privacy practice, Dave counsels clients on the development of privacy compliance programs, privacy notices, contract remediation, and other issues related to obligations under US privacy laws and the extraterritorial aspects of international privacy laws affecting US businesses.

While earning his J.D. from William & Mary Law School, Dave served as Executive Editor of the William & Mary Business Law Review, Staff Editor of the William & Mary Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal and was a member of the Business Law Field Consultancy Clinic at William & Mary’s Mason School of Business.