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News Release 21-114
Contact: Peg O'Laughlin, 202-205-1819
Jason E. Kearns, Chair of the United States International Trade Commission (USITC), announced today that Monica V. Bhattacharyya has been named a USITC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). Bhattacharyya will manage an active litigation docket, preside over evidentiary hearings, and make initial determinations in the Commission’s investigations involving unfair practices in import trade under section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (“Section 337”). These investigations most often involve allegations of patent and trademark infringement.
Bhattacharyya has extensive experience in intellectual property litigation in both the public and private sectors, as well as a deep knowledge of disputes arising under Section 337. Since 2012, she has served as an investigative attorney in the USITC’s Office of Unfair Import Investigations, regularly appearing in investigations as an independent party, on behalf of the U.S. public.
Before joining the USITC, Bhattacharyya worked for more than 12 years in private practice, including as a Partner in the Intellectual Property group of the New York law firm of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, where she represented and counseled clients on patent and other intellectual property matters in federal and state courts. Prior to that, she worked as an intellectual property litigation associate with the law firms of Wiggin and Dana LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and as a litigation associate with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. She served as a law clerk for the Honorable Louis H. Pollak in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Bhattacharyya holds a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School; a Master of Arts degree in Politics from Princeton University; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry, magna cum laude, from Harvard-Radcliffe College. She also studied comparative legal systems as a Bundeskanzler Scholar at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.
The USITC is an independent, nonpartisan, factfinding federal agency. The agency investigates and makes determinations in proceedings involving imports claimed to injure a domestic industry or violate U.S. intellectual property rights; provides independent analysis and information on tariffs, trade, and competitiveness to the President and the Congress; and maintains the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule.