Lawyer Disbarred Again But Still Practicing

New York Lawyer - February 6, 2008
The Recorder By Petra Pasternak

IP attorney Malcolm Wittenberg, who caused a stir in the legal community seven years ago with an insider trading conviction, was recently disbarred in Washington, D.C.

Wittenberg, who used to be head of the patent practice at what is now Reed Smith and was then Oakland's Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May, is now of counsel at San Francisco's Dergosits & Noah.

The D.C. Court of Appeals disbarred Wittenberg on Jan. 31 based on a reciprocal proceeding in Virginia, where Wittenberg was disbarred in March 2002. California's State Bar Court had previously given Wittenberg three years of actual suspension but declined to disbar him.

In 2001, he had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of using inside information to obtain shares of stock in Forte Software Inc. days before the company merged with Sun Microsystems Inc. Wittenberg, who had done some work for Forte, made a $14,000 profit. A federal judge in California placed him on three years' probation and fined him $10,000.

Wittenberg told Legal Times, a Recorder affiliate, that he never challenged the D.C. Bar Counsel investigation and hasn't practiced in the District since the 1970s. He declined to comment on his felony conviction. "This was an event that happened in 1999. Quite frankly, I've moved beyond it," he said.