Christopher Seamus Finnerty

Christopher S. Finnerty is an attorney in Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough's Intellectual Property Practice Group.  Mr. Finnerty represents clients in antitrust, distribution, Internet and intellectual property matters. He serves as antitrust counsel to both national and international corporations, advising on both legal and practical aspects of distribution. He concentrates his practice in the design and implementation of distribution strategies, with resale price maintenance strategies such as unilateral or "Colgate" policies for companies with annual sales ranging from $10 million to $5 billion. Mr. Finnerty routinely negotiates national and international distribution contracts for manufacturers.

Mr. Finnerty's intellectual property practice includes trademark and copyright infringement litigation and advice regarding intellectual property dilution over the Internet. Specifically, Mr. Finnerty helps companies devise strategies to limit unauthorized resale of their products and importation of counterfeit products by targeting both consumer web sites (such as eBay) and business-to-business web sites (such as DHGate). The Brand Equity and Strategic Distribution group has working relationships with more than 100 of the world’s largest consumer and business-to-business web sites, in an effort to limit the grey market and eliminate counterfeit sales. Mr. Finnerty has more than five years of online monitoring experience with a focus on the eBay marketplace. He assists companies with the early detection and suppression of online counterfeits as well as providing companies with the tools to protect their distribution strategies and enforce their intellectual property rights.

Mr. Finnerty's team has created a unique approach to combating the issues that arise on eBay by combining proprietary software and a knowledge of worldwide intellectual property laws. The number of auctions shut down on eBay by WolfBlock's Boston team in a year averages 15,000 per company. In addition to simply shutting down auctions, Mr. Finnerty has worked to identify marketplace trends and has successfully pursued litigation against the biggest sellers.

Representative clients of Mr. Finnerty include GN Netcom, Inc., Corsa Performance and the Roll-N-Lock Corporation.

Mr. Finnerty is a member of the Section of Antitrust Law of both the American Bar Association and the Boston Bar Association.

Mr. Finnerty is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, the First Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a graduate of Suffolk University Law School and Gettysburg College.