Christian S. Genetski

Partner, Washington, D.C.
202.706.5203
christian@zwillgen.com

Christian is a founding partner of Zwillinger Genetski LLP.   He brings to the firm well over a decade of experience working at the intersection of law and technology in both Am Law 50 firms and the federal government.  His practice focuses on advising clients in connection with their online practices, both defending those practices against civil claims and government inquiries and pursuing litigation and creative, non-traditional enforcement actions against third-party wrongdoers.  He conducts investigations of information security and privacy breaches, infringement of intellectual property, and other hostile Internet activity, and represents clients in civil litigation, criminal referrals, and defending state and federal regulatory and criminal inquiries.  He has served as lead counsel in actions in federal district courts across the country and handled appeals in several U.S. Courts of Appeal.

Christian's clients include many of the nation's most prominent computer and video game publishers, social networking sites, Internet portals, ISPs, and satellite and cable television providers.  He also works regularly with start-up ventures in the Internet security and privacy space, as well as with traditional brick and mortar companies as their reliance on electronic information increases.  He advises these clients on privacy, security, and intellectual property issues arising from the storage of user data and introduction of new technologies and services, and devises and executes enforcement programs against infringers, hackers, spammers and other Internet wrongdoers.  He has also defended numerous corporations and individuals in government investigations and civil cases involving online practices, copyright and trademark infringement, unfair practices, DMCA, right of publicity and related privacy and IP claims.  He is recognized as one of the country's leading practitioners on issues arising under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Prior to founding Zwillinger Genetski LLP, Christian was a partner at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, and Zwillinger Genetski and Sonnenschein continue to work closely in a teaming relationship to support client needs.  Christian is also a former trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, where he coordinated the investigations of several prominent computer crime cases, including the widely publicized Denial of Service Attacks that hit e-commerce sites eBay, Amazon.com and others in February 2000, and prosecuted criminal copyright, trademark and Economic Espionage Act cases. He also trained federal prosecutors and agents on computer crime, intellectual property rights enforcement, privacy, encryption, critical infrastructure protection and other issues arising in connection with new technologies.

Christian currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Crime Law at the Georgetown University Law Center

Publications

"Criminal Discovery of Internet Communications Under the Stored Communications Act: It's Not a Level Playing Field," The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, June 2007.

"Legal Issues: The Laws Affecting Information Security Professionals," in Network Security: The Complete Reference, McGraw Hill, 2004

"Calculating Loss Under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996," 9 George Mason Law Review 323, 2000.

Presentations

Mr. Genetski regularly lectures to a wide variety of audiences on topics related to computer crime and information security, and currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Crime law at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Education

Vanderbilt University School of Law, J.D., 1995

Order of the Coif; Articles Editor, Vanderbilt Law Review

Birmingham-Southern College, B.A., magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa, 1992

Prior Experience

Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Computer Crime and intellectual Property Section

Associate, King & Spalding LLP

Judicial Clerk, The Hon. Frank M. Johnson, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

 Admitted to Bar

District of Columbia, 1999

Georgia, 1995