Immediate Source of Acquisition

The papers of Donald K. Duvall were given to the Law School by Mr. Duvall in May of 1999.

Biographical / Historical

Donald K. Duvall was born 30 October 1925 in Washington, D.C. He received his B.A.from Yale University in 1949, J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1953, and LL.M. from Georgetown University in 1959. He was an attorney for the State Department, 1955-1970, and practiced in private law in D.C. and Virginia, 1953-1955.

Mr. Duvall was an administrative law judge (ALJ) with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, 1971-1978, and with the Social Security Administration (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) for one year, 1970-1971.

From 1979 to 1984, he served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the U.S. International Trade Commission, working as the trial judge in many unfair import investigations under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. In 1984, he joined the D.C. and New York City firm of Kenyon & Kenyon as an attorney at law and counsel, specializing in international trade, unfair competition, and intellectual property law.

He was registered [had permission to practice] at the Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal District, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, U.S. Claims Court, U.S. Court of International Trade, U.S. Court of Military Appeals, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Court of Appeals of Maryland, and the U.S. District Court for Maryland.

He was member of American Bar Association, Chairman of International Law and Practice, 1973-1974, a member of the Section of Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law, and Division of Judicial Administration, and member of the Standing Committee in World Order Under Law, 1977-1980. He was also a member of the Conference of Administrative Law Judges, the Inter-American Bar, the International Trade Commission Trial Lawyers Association, the Customs and International Trade Bar Association, the International Intellectual Property Law Association, the Washington Foreign Law Society, the American Judicatory Society, the Federal Bar Association, and the American Law Institute.

Mr. Duvall served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, 1950-1958, and was in the U.S. Army (European Theater), 1944-1946. He was a member of the American Society of International Law, the Supreme Court Historical Society, the World Jurist Association, the Rotary Club of Washington, D.C., the Yale Club of Washington, D.C., the Cosmos Club, the Society of Descendants of Mareen Duvall (French Huguenot immigrant), the National Lawyers Club, the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity, the Giles S. Rich American Inn of Court, the Virginia Journal of International Law, and cofounder of the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law.

Scope and Contents

Mr. Duvall's Papers consist of cases and other materials pertaining to his tenure as an Administrative Law Judge and later as an attorney to Kenyon and Kenyon, working with Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The papers are divided in two series:

1. Cases where he acted as a judge on section 337 matters.

2. Cases where he was an attorney for the plaintiff. The most important case in this section is the DRAMs [Certain Dynamic Random Access Memories Components]. The investigation was instituted by the International Trade Commission on March 19, 1986, in response to a complaint filed on behalf of Texas Instruments, Inc., alleging a violation of section 337 in the importation of certain dynamic random access memories (DRAMs) alleged to infringe one or more of ten patents owned by Texas Instruments." (A DRAM is "monolithic integrated memory circuit containing thousands of storage cells (bits), each of which usually contains a transistor and a capacitor.") That the "importation and sale constitute unfair methods of competition and unfair acts by reason of infringement of certain claims of ten U.S. Patents owned by TI." That this competition has "the effect to destroy or substantially injure an efficiently and economically operated domestic industry." There were nineteen respondents. Nine Japanese companies, including Matsushita Electric Industrial CO., Hitachi, Ltd., Toshiba Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, et al.; two Korean companies, Samsung Company, Ltd. and Samsung Semiconductor and Telecommunications Co., Ltd.; and eight U.S. companies. On March 23, 1987, TI announced DRAMs settlements with six of the Japanese companies, and was paid $134 million (Southwest Newswire. March 23, 1987. Lexis Nexis ).

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Administrative courts -- United States
• Administrative law -- United States
• Duvall, Donald K.
• Judges
• Patents (International law)
• Tariff -- United States
• lawyers -- United States