A partner in the Litigation Department and Head of the Antitrust Litigation Practice Group, Bill Michael has extensive experience in antitrust litigation and plays a lead role in many of the firm’s most consequential antitrust engagements, including business-critical litigation, trials, appellate matters, and government investigations. Clients have described Bill as “an absolutely fantastic trial lawyer,” “enormously skilled,” “a great writer,” “a razor-sharp lawyer who . . . can think around corners,” and “an excellent oral advocate” (Chambers USA, 2021, 2022, 2026).
Significant representations include:
- Mastercard as lead counsel in multiple antitrust litigation matters.
- Intuitive Surgical, Inc. at trial in an antitrust suit brought by Surgical Instrument Service Company, Inc., (SIS) alleging that Intuitive illegally tied the sale and service of its da Vinci surgical robots to the purchase of its EndoWrist instruments. Bill served as co-lead trial counsel in the three-and-a-half-week jury trial in the Northern District of California.
- Syngenta in antitrust litigation brought by the FTC and various state AGs, and a MDL in the Middle District of North Carolina brought by a putative class of farmers, all alleging that Syngenta and a co-defendant used exclusionary loyalty programs to block generic competition and inflate prices for crop protection products.
- Regeneron in its antitrust action against Novartis and Vetter Pharma, alleging that Novartis and Vetter conspired in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
- Goldman Sachs in an antitrust class action involving Variable Rate Demand Obligations (VRDOs); an antitrust action involving interest rate swaps (IRS) trading; and an antitrust action involving credit default swaps (CDS) auctions.
- Bard in a competitor antitrust case alleging illegal tying. Bill served as trial counsel in a three-week jury trial in the Northern District of New York, winning a complete defense verdict for Bard.
- News Corporation and certain subsidiaries in a class action involving claims of exclusive dealing and monopolization, as well as in multiple antitrust actions brought by competitors. Bill co-led a team that successfully defended News Corporation against such claims in a three-week jury trial in the Southern District of New York.
- Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) in antitrust litigation involving monopolization, exclusive dealing and bundled discount claims. Bill argued and won an appeal in the Seventh Circuit, affirming the dismissal with prejudice of a putative class action claiming that BD conspired with distributors of its products in violation of antitrust laws. Bill also helped BD obtain complete dismissal of a putative antitrust class action in the Northern District of Georgia; defeat a competitor’s claims of exclusive dealing and monopolization at a jury trial in the Eastern District of Texas; and reverse a judgment of liability and damages for attempted monopolization by deception in the Fifth Circuit.
- ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) in a rate court litigation against the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC).
- SAP AG in defense of an action brought by a business analytics provider seeking more than one billion dollars in damages, alleging that SAP misappropriated trade secrets, infringed copyrights and violated antitrust laws related to its flagship product, HANA.
- Bumble Bee Seafoods in a putative antitrust class action and opt-out litigation involving claims of price fixing in the packaged seafood industry.
- Tribune Media Company in multidistrict antitrust litigation involving claims of price fixing in the market for the sale of local television advertisements.
- A major energy company in a bid-rigging investigation by the United States Department of Justice.
- A leading audio and visual technology company in an IP licensing dispute involving antitrust claims based on an alleged breach of FRAND obligations.
- Pretium Resources in winning a motion to dismiss a complaint by a putative class of investors alleging securities fraud.
Bill was shortlisted as Litigator of the Year by Global Competition Review’s 2023 awards, and recognized by Chambers USA in the “Antitrust (NY)” category (2021-2026), and in the “Antitrust: Civil Litigation/Class Actions: Defense” category of Legal 500 USA (2022-2026). Bill was also named a “Winning Litigators (Defense)” finalist by the National Law Journal in its 2025 annual awards, a “Litigation Star” by Benchmark Litigation (2026) and one of Lawdragon’s “500 Leading Litigators” (2027).
Bill is the co-author of the “United States” chapter in the tenth - fifteenth editions of The Public Competition Enforcement Review (Law Business Research 2019-2024) and the co-author of the chapter titled “Settling an Antitrust Case” in Settlement Agreements in Commercial Disputes: Negotiating, Drafting & Enforcement, Vol. 2 (Wolters Kluwer 2017). Bill has also authored several articles on antitrust-related issues for publications including the New York Law Journal, Law360 and Competition Policy International. He previously served as Chair of the Editorial Board of The Antitrust Practitioner, a publication of the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law Civil Practice and Procedure Committee.
Prior to joining Paul, Weiss, Bill was a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he focused on civil merger and non-merger investigations in the telecommunications and media industries.
In law school, Bill was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.
