President Obama Nominates Richard Gary Taranto to Serve on the US Court of Appeals

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, President Obama nominated Richard Gary Taranto to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 

President Obama said, “Richard Taranto is a lawyer of exceptional legal ability and great personal and professional integrity.  I am pleased and honored to nominate him to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Federal Circuit, and I am confident that his intelligence, independence, judgment, and temperament will make him a welcome addition to that court.”

Richard Gary Taranto:  Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Richard Gary Taranto is a partner at the two-person law firm of Farr & Taranto, located in Washington, D.C.  He has argued 19 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and has extensive experience litigating intellectual property and patent cases before both the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court. 

Taranto was born in New York City.  He received a B.A. summa cum laude in 1977 from Pomona College in Claremont, California.  He then attended Yale Law School, where he served as an Article and Book Editor on the Yale Law Journal and obtained his J.D. in 1981.  Upon his graduation from law school, Taranto clerked for the Honorable Abraham Sofaer of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  The following year, from 1982 to 1983, he clerked for the Honorable Robert Bork of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  He then clerked, from 1983 to 1984, for the Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1984, Taranto joined the firm of Onek, Klein & Farr, in Washington, D.C.  He left the firm in 1986 to spend three years as an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States Department of Justice.  In 1989, Taranto returned to Onek, Klein & Farr as a partner.  In 1991, he became a named partner at the firm, which has been known as Farr & Taranto since 1994.

Taranto has taught a course on patent law at Harvard Law School and several courses on different topics at the Georgetown University Law Center.  He has also served, since 2009, as a member of the Appellate Rules Advisory Committee for the United States Judicial Conference.